Royal Surrey County Hospital (RSCH)

By Martin Giles

A Daily Mail report which claimed that the “Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust recorded the highest number of excess hospital deaths…with 53 per cent more than expected” has been rejected by the hospital as “completely inaccurate”. The Royal Surrey says the hospital has had “a consistently excellent…position for the past five years”.

See update below…

The Daily Mail ‘Exclusive’ report on the RSCH

The Mail report said that “15 ‘deadliest’ hospitals — where patient fatalities are far higher than they should be — have been revealed in an official report” and that the Royal Surrey had the worst performance on this metric in the whole country.

The report that the Mail quoted, published by NHS England, is based on a calculation taking into account the number of deaths expected to be recorded in an NHS Trust between April 2023 and March this year and the actual number that occurred. But the Royal Surrey spokesperson said the NHS report itself was “incorrect”.

Expected death tolls are based on average annual figures as well as the characteristics, such as age, of the patients treated.

Patient deaths in the NHS report include both those who die in hospital as well those who die within 30 days of being discharged.

The Mail story said: “In the case of Royal Surrey, the Trust recorded 1,335 fatalities in the reporting period compared to a predicted 875.” But the Mail admitted that when they contacted the RSCH “it insisted the data was incorrect however it did not provide alternative figures”.

In a statement on the Royal Surrey’s website, the Medical Director, Dr William Jewsbury, said: “The data report on the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI) – Deaths associated with hospitalisation, England, April 2023-March 2024 for our Trust is incorrect due to a data submission issue and NHSE are in the process of removing Royal Surrey data from the SHMI report whilst the correct data is processed.

“The interpretation of the incorrect report – that Royal Surrey recorded the highest number of excess hospital deaths – is completely inaccurate. The Royal Surrey has maintained a consistently excellent SHMI position for the past five years and we have seen nothing to suggest this has changed.”

August 12 update: NHS England has now published the following statement indicating that the inaccuracy was caused by erroneous data sent to them: “Data for Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (trust code RA2) has been suppressed from publication. This trust had submitted in error a high percentage of records with no secondary care diagnosis codes, this has made their SHMI values highly misleading. They have corrected the data at source, and this is expected to be reflected in the November SHMI publication.”