NHS Reveals Best and Worst-Performing Hospitals in England - Is Your Healthcare Provider Included?

For the first time, the public can see how every NHS trust in England stacks up, thanks to a newly launched online dashboard that ranks hospitals on patient care, medical treatments, and other key targets. In unveiling the dashboard, Health Secretary Wes Streeting revealed that the quarterly rankings presented on the league tables will determine where urgent support is necessary and help eliminate the 'postcode lottery' of care for patients.

While the data used by NHS England has always been readily available, this is the first time the information appears in a user-friendly format, making it easier for the public to understand how their local services compare across the country.

The rankings assess trusts based on a variety of metrics, including financial health, patient access to appropriate care, A&E and surgical wait times, and ambulance response speed. The trusts are segmented into four categories, with the first showing the best-performing hospitals and the fourth listing the most challenged. Those belonging to the best-performing category will be granted greater freedoms and higher investment, according to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Which Hospitals Perform Best? Which Ones Are Lagging Behind?

Specialist trusts dominate the top tier of the new NHS league tables. Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust takes the number one spot, followed by the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.

Meanwhile, the best-performing large hospital trust is the Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, coming in at ninth place.

The worst performers can be found on the opposite end of the table. It includes the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and Devon Partnership Trust. The lowest-ranked trust in the country is Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Those belonging to the middle ranks are being encouraged to get inspiration from the leading performers to help improve their rankings.

Push for Transparency and Reform

Streeting said, 'We must be honest about the state of the NHS to fix it. Patients and taxpayers have to know how their local NHS services are doing compared to the rest of the country.'

'These league tables will identify where urgent support is needed and allow high-performing areas to share best practices with others, taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS', the health secretary added.

Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of NHS Providers, shared his thoughts about the accuracy and impact of the new tables. 'There's more work to do before patients, staff and trusts can have confidence that these league tables are accurately identifying the best-performing organisations,' he said.

'For league tables to really drive up standards, tackle variations in care, and boost transparency, they need to measure the right things, be based on accurate, clear and objective data and avoid measuring what isn't in individual providers' gift to improve. Then they will drive improvement and boost performance.'