Specialist hospital 'has worst bypass death rates

The NHS trust that took over a specialist heart hospital from the private sector has a death rate for heart bypass operations that is 2.75 times the national average, according to a survey published today.

University College London hospitals trust (UCLH) is the only trust in the country significantly out of line with the national average for bypass deaths, health analysis company Dr Foster found.

UCLH carries out its bypass operations at the Heart Hospital, which was a private sector specialist hospital until August 2001, when the trust bought it for ?27m. Last month, the UCLH chief executive, Robert Naylor, put in a bid to clear the entire English waiting list for cardio-vascular surgery. He admitted that after meeting the trust's own waiting list targets, the Heart Hospital had empty beds.

Another London teaching hospital, St George's in Tooting, heads the list for death rates after aortic valve surgery, with a rate of more than twice the national average, according to the Dr Foster survey, published in the Times today.

But NHS managers have criticised the survey, pointing out that the high-risk patients taken on by leading teaching hospital trusts skew the results.

Dr Foster's statistics compare death rates for the three years up to March 2002 in all English hospitals that carry out aortic valve and bypass operations. But both UCLH and St George's maintain that the high-risk patients they treat account for the poor results.

Neil Griffiths, newly appointed chief executive of UCLH's Heart Hospital, said the figures did not reflect the trust's current performance, explaining that mortality had been high but had recently improved significantly. "There were issues in the past but we have done a huge amount of work to put them right," he said.

"Before we moved here, heart operations were done at Middlesex Hospital, with no dedicated intensive care facilities and in a far less cohesive unit than we have here. Our problem with these figures is that they cover three years, so don't reflect our great improvements."

Of the 273 heart bypass patients treated between April and September this year, only two had died, UCLH said.

St George's interim chief executive, Peter Homa, formerly head of the Commission for Health Improvement, said: "Like many hospitals which have specialist teams of surgeons with good reputations, we take more severely ill patients."

The Times is publishing a series of consultants' guides, carrying statistics it says reflect regional disparities in the NHS in various areas of health. Compiled by Dr Foster, one guide, published on Saturday, showed that patients undergoing hip operations were four times more likely to die in some hospitals than in others.