Medical negligence risk – Medway NHS Foundation Trust mortality rates higher than expected

If you live in the Gillingham or West Kent area, and you need medical treatment from the NHS, Dr Foster guide isn’t overly reassuring. If you take a look at the statistics from the 2011 Dr Foster Hospital Guide [and you might want to have a look at my earlier blog entry all about the Dr Foster website to see why we think it’s so very important] , you will see that hospital trusts are measured according to four mortality rates. They are determined to be either within the expected range, achieving lower mortality rates than expected or higher rates than expected.

On two of the four mortality measures, the Medway NHS Foundation Trust is posting higher than expected rates, something that is sure to concern patients who use the service. The two higher than expected rates in question are the HSMR and SHMI.

The HSMR is something that measures the bulk of hospital deaths (80%) and accounts for 56 different conditions: the Medway NHS Foundation Trust posted a mortality rate of 116. This is considerably higher than the results achieved by many other trusts.

The SHMI is a measure of patient deaths after hospital treatment, and the trust in question had a rate of 115. Again, this is quite a lot higher than the best performers in the category. However, the Medway Foundation Trust was performing within the expected range for deaths after surgery and deaths in low-risk conditions.

Although the figures don’t tell us the reasons between the higher than expected HSMR and SHMI results for the Medway NHS Trust, they are sure to be of concern to patients who are worried about the level of care they or their loved ones are receiving.

This clear poor performance is particularly disappointing to me – I grew up in Maidstone and was well treated as a child on a number of occasions at the old West Kent hospital in the town centre – which is long gone.

Victim of Medical Negligence in Gillingham or West Kent?

If you live in Gillingham or West Kent and you think you have been the victim of medical negligence at any of the units on the old Medway Maritime Hospital site [which of course includes West Kent Vascular Centre, Centre for Urology, the Macmillan Cancer Care unit  and the dedicated stroke unit] and want to know how to claim compensation –  for FREE initial advice and a FREE first appointment.