New hospital mortality indicator

17 November 2010

A new mortality indicator for NHS hospitals in England is to be launched in April.

The new method published by the NHS National Quality Board is called the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMIs) and will be used to help “better understand trends associated with patient deaths”.

The new indicator has been developed in response to debate over how mortality data should be calculated and used. The recent Francis Review into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust shed new light on this debate and recommended a national review so that variations and trends associated with hospital deaths could be better understood. The resulting review reached a consensus that an SHMI is only one of a number of indicators that can provide information about a hospital and its quality and cannot be used as a standalone indication of quality or to rank hospitals in crude league tables.

Ian Dalton, who chaired the review as Chief Executive of NHS North East and is now the Director of Provider Development at the Department of Health, said: "This is a huge achievement - we now have a wide-ranging consensus not only on the best way to measure mortality but also on how this measure should be used."

"A high SHMI on its own is not an indication of poor standards of care but it is a trigger to take action. Hospital boards across the country have a responsibility to pursue questions the SHMI might raise and quick action will help to ensure safe care for patients at all times."

The method will now be subject to rigorous independent testing and analysis before being formally introduced to the NHS by April 2011.