Hospital slammed over patient safety

30 November 2009

WESTON'S hospital trust has been criticised along with 11 other trusts for patient safety in an independent report.

Weston Area Health Trust, which runs Weston General Hospital, was given a 4.11 score out of 100 for basic safety measures in the latest Hospital Guide by monitoring body Dr Foster organisation.

The report ranked the Weston body fifth bottom in the country and judged it to be 'significantly underperforming'.

The publication comes despite the trust being rated 'fair' by official health regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

This week, the trust defended itself, claiming it was marked down because it was late to join an NHS reporting scheme called the National Patient Safety Agency.

In a statement it said: "The trust answered Dr Foster's questionnaire honestly and in good faith and was alerted that its score had been lowered by the responses to the questions on the National Patient Safety Agency.

"We can confirm that we are now fully compliant in this area and that the query was never about our delivery of care, but about whether we had a reporting policy or procedure in place, for example."

The 327-bed hospital was also found to carry out a 'significantly low' number of hip fracture operations within the two day guideline in the report.

The statement continued: "Nationally recognised indicators show this organisation is delivering safe care and our mortality rate is well within the national average - indeed better than the average for some specialties.

"This year we have been inspected or reviewed by the CQC, Hygiene Code inspection and CQC Healthcare Standards.

"All feedback has been positive about the trust, although we still have work to do in these areas, as would be expected.

"We will be studying the detail of the Dr Foster findings to see if we can improve our already high standards still further.