Hospital standardised mortality ratios (HSMRs) for every non-specialist acute national health service trust in England have been published each month on the NHS Choices website at
www.nhs.uk
since April 2009. The hospital comparison features of NHS Choices allows the list to be sorted by a range of elements, including by HSMR banding and the Care Quality Commission's Quality of Care indicator.
Hospital standardised mortality ratios (HSMRs) for each acute hospital trust in England are published on the NHS Choices website and are updated regularly. The Care Quality Commission has an ongoing programme of review of HSMRs, alongside a range of other data, such as readmission rates, infection rates and reported incidents, as well as information from inspections, the public and other organisations, as part of its system for the registration of national health service trusts.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has looked closely at the mortality rates of every trust in England when assessing its application for registration. The CQC will continue to look at mortality rates as part of ongoing monitoring and compliance of trusts' registration.
The CQC has advised us that it calculates standardised mortality ratios using hospital episode statistics data.
In addition to this, the CQC receives copies of mortality alerts from the Dr. Foster Unit at Imperial College each month.
The CQC has an established surveillance programme of generating and acting upon mortality outlier alerts for specific clinical groups. At the point of receiving an alert, the CQC undertakes a rigorous range of statistical and other analyses and brings together clinical advice and local knowledge to make decisions about the course of action to be taken.