The latest Hospital Guide from Doctor Foster has revealed that nine trusts rated as good or excellent by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) are among 12 found by the guide to be ‘significantly underperforming’ regarding basic health and safety measures.

The guide has identified 27 trusts in which hospitals have ‘unusually high’ mortality rates, involving 5,000 more deaths than would normally be expected

The Daily Mail reports that the CQC – the government’s official health regulator – had previously rated Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as ‘good’. Last week the foundation trust regulator Monitor was called into the trust to investigate allegations of dirty equipment and a higher than normal death rate among patients.

The Daily Mail lists the following hospitals as having been flagged up by the Dr Foster Hospital Guide as ‘underperforming’:

·  St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals Trust (rated as excellent by the CQC)

·  Basildon and Thurrock (rated as good by the CQC)

·  Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals Foundation Trust (rated as good by the CQC)

·  Hereford Hospitals Trust (rated as good by the CQC)

·  Lewisham, southeast London (rated as good by the CQC)

·  South London Healthcare Trust (rated as good by the CQC)

·  Tameside Hospital Foundation Trust (rated as good by the CQC)

·  University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (rated as good by the CQC)

·  University Hospital of South Manchester (rated as good by the CQC)

·  Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust (rated as fair by the CQC)

·  Scarborough and North East Yorkshire (rated as fair by the CQC)

·  Weston Area Health Trust (rated as fair by the CQC)

Head of the CQC, Baroness Young, said that some of the ‘part-NHS, part-Dr Foster’ data was very legitimate – but called other parts of the data ‘very alarmist’ and said she did not believe any other trusts other than Basildon should be subjected to a more thorough ‘task force’ investigation.

'We do a comprehensive programme of monitoring, on a much more detailed level,’ she said.

The director of Dr Foster, Roger Taylor, defended the guide and said more information about hospitals ’should be made public’. The Dr Foster Hospital guide found that 39 per cent of health trusts failed to investigate ‘unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards'.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham has ordered an urgent inquiry into whether any other trusts require task forces to go in and investigate standards of care.

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