Death rates at Medway Maritime Hospital have failed to improve after it was placed in special measures.

A report into mortality rates at the 11 NHS trusts which were put under the emergency measures following the Keogh review has been published by healthcare analysts Dr Foster.

Taken as a group, there has been a significant reduction in mortality rates at the hospital trusts since 2013 but at Medway Maritime, they have not got any better.

From January 2013 to December 2014, at Medway there were 185 more deaths than expected, placing it under the ‘higher than expected’ category.

Dr Foster compared mortality data from the 11 Keogh trusts with thousands other trusts to establish how they had performed relative to the average.

Two hospital trusts - Medway and Burton – showed a flat line. The two trusts which were moved out of special measures immediately by the Care Quality Commission (Basildon and Thurrock and George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust) both exhibited strong turnarounds in mortality rates.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which was given a six-month extension in special measures, also showed this trend.

Five trusts showed a consistent downward trend (Buckinghamshire, North Cumbria, Northern Lincolnshire, Sherwood Forest and United Lincolnshire Hospitals) and one trust showed a rising trend (Tameside).

Roger Taylor, Dr Foster’s director of research and public affairs, said: “Our analysis gives us some hard evidence that special measures can be an effective tool for turning around NHS trusts that experience problems.

"Hospitals need to be paying attention to any warning signs coming from their data to ensure patient safety isn’t compromised.” - Roger Taylor

“It’s now up to the NHS to learn the lessons of what worked in each of the 11 trusts, so that a best practice approach for special measures can be adopted.

“This work underlines the usefulness of mortality data as an indicator of hospital quality. Hospitals need to be paying attention to any warning signs coming from their data to ensure patient safety isn’t compromised.”

In March 2013, Medway was one of 14 hospital trusts named by Dr Foster as having higher than expected higher mortality rates. This led to it being included in the Keogh review and later to the trust being put into special measures in July 2013.

Eighteen months on, the latest Care Quality Commission report, published last week found the hospital still failing to meet standards and it has been told it must remain in special measures indefinitely – the only trust to be given this stipulation.