MEDWAY health chief Jan Filochowski has launched a counter offensive against a damning Government report labelling his hospital one of the worst in the country.

After performance figures gave Medway Maritime Hospital a zero-star rating, management will now have just a few months to improve standards or face being ousted by managerial hit squads.

But Mr Filochowski, chief executive of Medway NHS Trust, insisted improvements were being made at the hospital and it could even be in line to pick up a top three star rating next time around.

He said hospital figures for the last few months already showed that the hospital was performing well across the 21 categories examined by the Department of Health. Improvements would continue, he promised.

"I am confident this won't be a no-star trust next year, and we may well even be a two or three-star trust," Mr Filochowski said. "The figures over the last months show that we are performing better."

Department of Health inspectors failed the hospital on four categories of services, including the percentages of outpatients seen within 13 weeks of GP referral, and the proportion of breast cancer patients referred to the consultant within two weeks by the family doctor. The trust also fell down on patients waiting less than six months for in-patient admission, and its financial overspend.

But Mr Filochowski unveiled a list of measures the trust was taking to deal with each of the categories in which the trust failed. On breast cancer waits, hospital bosses had already appointed another surgeon, and more were on the way, to speed up care. Additional orthopaedic consultants had been recruited to tackle outpatient waiting lists in that category, among the least successful.

Two new wards opened in December, 2000 and January 2001, and a new operating theatre for in-patients and day cases, to drive down waits. The trust has also eliminated overspending, and is expected to break even, this financial year, as it had for months.