Has the NHS covered up 19,000 ‘suspect’ deaths? Health chiefs DELIBERATELY excluded ‘unexpected’ fatalities from official stats, expert claims
As many as 19,000 ‘unexpected’ deaths have systematically been excluded from official statistics over the past five years, it is claimed
THE NHS has been accused of covering up thousands of "suspect" deaths in English hospitals - sparking calls for an urgent inquiry.
As many as 19,000 "unexpected"; deaths have systematically been excluded from official statistics over the past five years, according to the expert who helped expose the Mid-Staffordshire hospitals scandal.
Professor Sir Brian Jarman says his shocking findings mean there are dozens of "potentially unsafe" hospitals that should be investigated over high death rates, but which are being overlooked.
Last night, Liberal Democrat Health spokesman Norman Lamb demanded that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt look into the claims as a matter of urgency.
Mr Lamb, who was a Health Minister in David Cameron’s Coalition Government, said: "These revelation are deeply disturbing.
"I am writing to Jeremy Hunt and to NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens asking for Prof Jarman’s analysis to be assessed as a matter of urgency and for a full response to be provided."
There are fears the Government is trying to "spin" down’ the number of high death rate trusts to demonstrate an improvement that doesn’t exist.
The NHS method classifies just ten trusts in England as having death rates above the expected range in 2016.
But under Prof Jarman's analysis, another 24 should also be classified as having high mortality rates.
Prof Jarman reached his alarming conclusions after studying official hospital death rate figures using an internationally accepted method – a method used as standard in health systems across Europe and the United States.
He calculated that there were 32,810 "unexpected" deaths in English hospitals over the past five years.
But using the NHS’s preferred method, only 13,627 were classed as such – a difference of 19,183 deaths.
In addition, the method Prof Jarman used, which is recommended by the UK’s Association of Public Health Observatories, classified 34 hospital trusts across England – responsible for 87 acute and community hospitals – as having significantly high death rates last year.
By contrast, the NHS method counted just ten trusts, covering 18 hospitals, as having death rates above "expected" levels.
When Prof Jarman raised concerns about the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust in 2007, he was ignored by the Department of Health – but it became one of the most shocking NHS scandals in history.
Now he says NHS officials are "fudging the figures", resulting in potentially fatal problems on hospital wards being ignored.
He added: "If you use internationally accepted criteria, then 34 hospital trusts have high death rates.
"But because the NHS is using what might be called a “fudge factor”, they are only identifying ten.
"As a result, we don’t know if anybody is taking any notice of these other 24 potentially unsafe hospital trusts.
"This is worrying because there might be serious clinical problems, and issues with patient safety, that are not being addressed."
Prof Jarman said the NHS had used the internationally recognised system, called Byar’s confidence intervals, in the past.
Until January 2012 it was used in tandem with another method – called overdispersion – which aims to give hospital trusts more leeway before being classed as having high death rates.
But the Byar’s method was then dropped, with bosses at NHS Digital, the Health Service’s statistics body, saying it was confusing to have two systems running at once.
But Professor David Spiegelhalter, president of the Royal Statistical Society, defended the NHS' approach.
Prof Spiegelhalter, who was a member of the team that selected overdispersion, said it rightly gave "some additional leeway to hospitals, to allow for the inevitable problems of fairly comparing mortality rates";.
He added: "The formulaused to calculate mortality rates is meant to take into account all the real-life differences between populations served by different hospitals, such as age and degree of illness.
"But it can never do that perfectly."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368