Fury on 'toothless' NHS regulator

The NHS regulator was accused of being "toothless" after a report found a raft of underperforming hospitals and consistently high death rates.

Dr Foster Intelligence rated a dozen hospitals as "significantly underperforming", despite nine of them being rated good or excellent by official regulator the Care Quality Commission.

Seven hospitals were also found to have considerably higher mortality rates for the past five years.

Bottom of Dr Fosters' league table was Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which last week had an emergency task force ordered in to improve standards.

The CQC has insisted that there was no need for similar interventions elsewhere and branded some of the Dr Foster data as "flaky". But Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: "It's clear that we are dealing with a toothless regulator.

"What confidence can we have in a system that claims hospitals are excellent or good when in fact they are consistently underperforming? The public will be so confused because there is so much conflicting information."

The CQC said comparison of the Dr Foster figures and its own assessments were "spurious" as they measured different things and employed different methodology. It said its annual check was "the most comprehensive assessment of the NHS ever undertaken" involving a declaration by each trust as to whether they were meeting 44 standards.

Dr Foster's latest Hospital Guide identified 27 trusts with unusually high mortality rates - totalling 5,000 more deaths than expected last year. Seven showed the trend over the past five years - with the Basildon and Thurrock Trust currently ranked worst with a death rate 31% higher over the past year than the national average.

The other six hospitals with consistently high death rates were Royal Bolton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (22% higher than average); Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (19%); Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (15%); Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (12%); University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (12%); and Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust (10%).

Dr Foster's research also uncovered widespread safety issues including 39% of trusts "failing to investigate unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards".