Written question asked by Stephen O'Brien (Conservative) on Tuesday, 30 March 2010, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 6 April 2010. It was answered by Mike O'Brien (Labour) on Wednesday, 7 April 2010 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Patients: Death

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what mechanism the Care Quality Commission uses to monitor mortality rates in NHS hospital trusts.

Answer: 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.

Secondary information