Operation death stats made public

Death rates for some other operations will be released later this year

Death rates for patients undergoing major surgery at NHS hospital trusts in England have been published for the first time.

No trusts fell below the expected standards for knee and hip replacements or abdominal aortic aneurysms with a handful doing better than expected.

The information is intended to help people decide where to be treated but patient groups called for more clarity.

Similar figures for other operations will be added in the coming months.

Patients can look up how their local hospital has performed on the NHS Choices website alongside a range of other measures already published such as MRSA rates.

I was pleasantly surprised there was quite so little variation Sir Bruce Keogh

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust were among those who did exceptionally well.

Although all trusts fell within the expected range for death rates there was an apparently large variation in performance.

For example, compared with a norm of 100, the highest death ratios for elective abdominal aortic aneurysm surgery - done to repair a defect in a major blood vessel - were at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (372), Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals Trust (332) and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust (328).

For hip replacements, figures were highest at Bolton Hospitals Trust (339), Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals Trust (290).

But officials stressed strongly that it was "inappropriate" to regard the lists as league tables as one or two deaths in a hospital where only a few operations had been done would skew the figures.

Therefore trusts in the same "as expected" performance band could be regarded as "effectively equivalent", they said.

Surprise

Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director said: "I was concerned there might be significant variations in outcomes across the country.

"I was pleasantly surprised there was quite so little variation.

"For patients to know it's safe for them to go to their local hospital is a great message and I think it's a tribute to the NHS."

But Roger Goss from Patient Concern said for such information to be useful to patients it needs to be available for individual hospitals.

"It's a small move in the right direction.

"But we need to know their definition of a 'good job' to get to the bottom of it, otherwise it's a waste of time.

"And unless they provide it by hospital, and ideally by clinician, it doesn't help."

The data was published alongside a review of progress on the sharing of information within the NHS.

It concluded that patients' need greater confidence that their personal details will be safe under the move to electronic records.

The review also outlined plans to develop the Healthspace service further, allowing patients to view their health records via the internet and for a portal for clinicians to compare data on the quality of care they provide against other organisations.