Five NHS -Trusts are plagued by abnormally high death rates, MailOnline can reveal today.
Our research into hospitals suggests that thousands of ‘surplus’ fatalities may have occurred between them.
Killing in one confidence in Norfolk have been marked as unusually high for almost five years.
Full results of our probe – based on the NHS’s own mortality data – can be viewed below in our zip code -search tools, with which you can see how your confidence comes.
Although our analysis cannot prove that deaths can necessarily be avoided or caused by poor care, experts warned that our discovery was a huge red flag.
NHS leaders publish in-depth fatal bulletins every month and follow how many hospital admissions are within 30 days after dismissals.
Under the summary hospital level Mortality Indicator (SHMI), founded in the aftermath of the Mid-Staffs scandal in the late nineties, officials then calculate how many deaths they would have expected for each facility. This is based on figures throughout England as a whole and the characteristics of the patients treated there.
A trust gets a ‘higher than expected’ score, or a banding of one, if the observed number of deaths exceeds the estimated range or the margin of uncertainty.
This should be seen as a ‘smoke alarm’ that requires further research, officials are on it.
NHS Digital, the agency that publishes SHMI updates, stated last week that seven trusts had a higher than expected number of deaths for the year ending on January 31, 2025.
The MailOnline study followed the ranks of every trust since December 2018, when monthly updates were first released.
Five have recorded the worst SHMI score for at least six consecutive months.
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which has a river basin of one million patients and operates two hospitals, has the top band every month since March 2020, when Covid started.
In the past year alone, that trust saw 535 more dead than expected.
East Cheshire NHS Trust, which runs three hospitals in Congleton, Knutsford and Macclesfield, has achieved the worst SHMI score 35 months in a row, dating from March 2022. In the year until January 31, 2021, 140 more deaths registered than expected.
The other three trusts that have abnormally high deaths at least six consecutive months were: County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, Medway NHS Foundation Trust and East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust.
Only trusts that will remain in operation under their name 2018 were included in the analysis.
Statistician of the University of Cambridge Dr. Stephen Burgess told MailOnline: ‘In every competition table someone will always be the worst.
‘However, this is not just an unfortunate finding – the trusts at the bottom of the table are considerably worse than average.
‘It is not possible to say whether there is a systematic error in the way the number of expected deaths is calculated for some trusts – large -scale collection of data is a complex process.
‘However, the figures do not make reading. More than half of the months with more reported deaths than expected is due to the lower 10 worst performing NHS -Trusts. ‘
A spokesperson for the NHS said: ‘The findings of each analysis of the summary of the health mortality -indicator (SHMI) or the underlying data must act as a starting point for further research, instead of treated as a definitive view of the quality of care.
“All hospitals must examine, understand and explain their SHMI value and use this information as a prompt to investigate specific areas of patient care and take action if necessary.”
The NHS states that it is ‘inappropriate’ that trusts are arranged on their SHMI.
The index was introduced in 2011 by the then secretary of Health, Andrew Lansley, who said he was determined to “shine a light on poor performance” after the “terrible events at Mid Staffs”, often considered the worst hospital shelter scandal of recent times.
Until 1200 patients died between January 2005 and March 2009 in Stafford Hospital, run by the now -known Mid Staffordshire NHS Hospital Trust.
The horrors, the fault of cost savings and poor decision -making, were discovered by a comparable data analysis.
Lord Lansley, who served under David Cameron, said that publishing the SHMI data “will help us prevent a repeat of that tragedy.”
Sir Bruce Keogh, at the time NHS Medical Director, said that “no one alone can give us a complete picture of the performance of a hospital.”
He explained his logic and added: ‘For example, nobody would buy a car that is only based on the mileage or how much miles you get with the Gallon would view a lot of information before you made a decision. In the same way, to really understand the quality of care in a hospital, you must view this in addition to other information. ‘
The report only came two months after Keir Starmer called the death bell for NHS England.
The prime minister stated that the ‘World’s largest quango’ will be canceled to restore ‘democratic control’ and to lower bureaucracy.
Over the course of two years, the body will be folded in the Ministry of Health, possibly cut 10,000 jobs and freeing cash for fixed frontline services.
It is thought that a long guard in A&E has contributed to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised last week to increase the spending on the NHS by three percent. It has been more than £ 150 billion a year.
What the five trusts said, in response to the MailOnline study
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Dr. Bernard Brett, medical director of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: ‘We have carried out a complete and thorough assessment of our death data and we have seen an improvement of our Shmis in the past year, which relates to more thorough data reception and improvements that we have brought in our care trails.
‘There are a number of reasons for higher than expected SHMI scores and here in Norfolk we have an older population, many with considerable long-term medical disorders and a larger proportion of patients with palliative care in our hospital. We have also identified important differences in how we record and record data compared to other trusts and there is an ongoing project to improve clinical data and coding quality and to ensure that the complexity of the patients we provide is accurately displayed in our data. We work together with our system partners to improve our palliative care paths.
‘Our trust was one of the first in England who implemented the medical researcher service and this team offers independent research of all the dead in the hospital. Although there are always opportunities to learn and improve, there are no indications from the medical researcher that the trust is an out of a bit for avoidable or unexpected deaths.
‘The improvements we have made and continue to assess, start to influence the data we use to monitor the number of patients who die after hospitalization. This is something that our trustboard continues to follow and is reported to regional and national colleagues. ‘
County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
A spokesperson for County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust said: ‘County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust is committed to offering high quality patient care and we take the monitoring and understanding of death data very seriously.
‘The Trust has an established mortality assessment process and a fully embedded process of Patient Safety Investigation (PSII) to carefully identify and assess matters to lean and inform improvements. Our medical research service also offers an extra layer of independent control over all deaths in the hospital. Regular reports are shared through our Open Trust Board in accordance with national guidelines on learning killing.
‘Interpreting mortality -indicators such as Shmi is complex and a number of factors contribute to variations in these figures over time. The accuracy and completeness of clinical files can influence the SHMI categorizations and changes in practice, as well as local differences in the way services are configured, can have an impact on the reported figures. It is a broad statistical measure that should not be used on its own to assess the quality of the care provided.
“In addition to our trust in confidence, we also commissioned external reviews to offer further independent certainty about our processes and we are focused on transparency, continuous learning and improvement in providing safe and compassionate care for all our patients.”
Medway NHS Foundation Trust
Still to comment
East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust
Although a spokesperson has not given an official statement, a member of the communication team said on e -mail: “The data is incorrect and we have nothing to add any further.”
They argued that the high number of ‘invalid diagnostic codes’ meant in the figures of the Trust that the figures should not be analyzed. Nine other trusts were marked as a high percentage of invalid diagnosis codes, but none was mentioned as one of the most ‘surplus’ deaths.
East Cheshire NHS Trust
Still to comment
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