New NHS table highlights Brighton hospital crisis (From The Argus)

New NHS table highlights Brighton hospital crisis

4:30pm Friday 15th March 2013 in News By Siobhan Ryan, Health Reporter

Royal Sussex County Hospital under fire in new report

A Sussex NHS trust has been revealed as one of the worst in the country in a new report showing patients how hospitals measure up against each another.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, was ranked 142nd out of 146 trusts assessed in a report by the independent health consultancy MHP Health Mandate.

Royal Sussex’s accident and emergency department has been hit by an overcrowding crisis during the past month.

Yesterday (March 14) The Argus revealed that nurses feared patients could die unless the problems are solved.

The report looked at ten standards which the authors believe matter most to patients, including the risk of MRSA, cancelled operations, written complaints and whether patients feel they have experienced good care.

Mixed sex wards, the percentage of patients who said they got better after an operation, the length of time people had to wait for an operation, the risk of being harmed and proportion of patients who said they were involved in decisions about their care were also in the assessment.

Authors used data compiled from reports by trust boards, the Health Protection Agency and Care Quality Commission inpatient and staff surveys.

Quality index

Brighton scored 2.92 overall on the Mandate’s Quality Index, below the national average just under four.

East Sussex Healthcare also performed poorly with 3.51, placing it among the 20 worst trusts in the country.

Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust was the best performing trust in the county, with an overall rating of 5.43.

However East Sussex Healthcare and Western Sussex were both in the bottom 20 trusts in a separate assessment by the consultancy that specifically looked at the treatment of lung cancer patients.

Government reports

A Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals spokeswoman said: “There are a large number of reports published by the government, NHS regulators and third parties regarding the quality of care within NHS hospitals and across the majority of these we perform well, particularly on important measures such as timely access to surgery and mortality rates.

“The methodology used by this report is, as far as we can tell, entirely new and today is the first time we have seen it. We will be better placed to comment once we have had a chance to look at it in more detail.”

A spokesman for the Patient Action Group in Sussex said: “It is a bit worrying to see two trusts in Sussex in the bottom 20 in the country.

“It is something we hope the hospitals will be looking into and trying to improve.”

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