A retired consultant has reassured the public that death rates at north Cumbria’s hospitals are not too high, despite previous claims.

Keith Ions said there is now evidence to show that a high-profile review which plunged the Cumberland Infirmary and West Cumberland Hospital into special measures in 2013 was based on flawed information.

The much-publicised Keogh Review was ordered by the Government four years ago as a result of worrying death rates.

But the review’s author, Sir Bruce Keogh, has defended the document, and pointed out that the inspections of the two hospitals – the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and Whitehaven’s West Cumberland Hospital – uncovered “numerous” concerns.

The Keogh Review had laid bare a catalogue of failings and, as a result, North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust remains in special measures to date.

But Mr Ions said research published recently shows the mortality data that triggered the visit was potentially flawed.

He believes that, at the time of the review, hospitals across the country were experiencing similar problems.

And although it may have ultimately led to improvements in care, Mr Ions said he wants to reassure patients and clarify previous claims that death rates at the trust were too high.

His comments are based on a research paper published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) looking at hospital-wide mortality ratios and whether they could be used to assess quality of care.

The study concluded that standardised mortality ratios (SMRs) – used by Keogh to assess whether death rates at hospitals were too high – “do not provide a useful indication of the proportion of avoidable deaths in a trust”.

It said this figure did not have statistical significance.

The study was the largest of its kind nationally and one of the largest worldwide.

It recommended that in future, other more reliable methods – such as the number of avoidable deaths rather than overall death rates – are used to reflect a hospital’s performance.

Mr Ions said: “The only way to know about the connection between death rates and hospital performance seems to be looking at avoidable death rates: people who die who could have been saved.

“For example, for someone with say appendicitis, death is avoidable with treatment. For someone with terminal cancer it is not.

“The avoidable death rate gives a better, though not infallible, guide to a hospital’s performance.

“However, the only way to get this information is by analysing the individual case notes of patients who have died.

“This is difficult to do, it’s hugely time-consuming and also costly because it has to be done by several experienced clinicians.”

Mr Ions said he hopes the findings will help to reassure patients and help to mend the trust’s reputation.

“Professor Keogh’s team could of course have gone into any hospital and found problems of one sort or another,” he added.

“What concerns me is that the people of north Cumbria may now think that death rates at the hospitals are too high, when this is not necessarily the case.

“This means people may have lost faith in the north Cumbria hospitals without good reason.

“Some positive changes will have resulted from the special measures intervention, but the reputation of the hospital has been unfairly damaged, and that can have long-term implications.”

But Sir Bruce Keogh, who led the review, defended his report.

He said: “The elevated mortality rate over two years was simply a trigger for the review.

“The BMJ study, to which Mr Ions refers, was recommended and instigated by the review to address exactly the issues he raises.

“In my report I was clear that ‘it is clinically meaningless and academically reckless to use such statistical measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths’.

“However, we cannot escape the fact that the 2013 visits uncovered numerous issues of concern in the trust, as did subsequent CQC visits in 2014 and 2015.

“In 2013 we found a Trust keen to improve, but with demonstrable weaknesses in a number of areas including some measures of safety, infection control and the way complaints and serious incidents were handled and understood.

“So the reason for the trust being put in special measures went well beyond mortality rates into other well documented areas.

“I know the trust has been working hard over the last few years to address these issues.”