Fears over death rates at flagship Scots heart hospital

Complex calculations have been used by the researchers investigating the number of deaths to take the mix of cases dealt with by each hospital into account.

The Golden Jubilee, which provides some heart services for patients across Scotland, disputes the figures published by the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland. It says its own re-examination of the data produced lower results.

However, in a statement on the society's website, the hospital added: "Despite the difficulties in making direct comparisons between cardiac surgery units' mortality rates, our outcomes data were not as good as the high standards we were seeking to achieve.

"This has led to an internal review that resulted in us making improvements over a number of key interrelated areas. This has led to reductions in mortality rates over time."

The audit collected the outcomes for heart surgery among adults across the UK between April 2008 and 2011. Dr Jean Turner, executive director of the Scotland Patients Association, said patients would be surprised as the Golden Jubilee had been billed by the previous Labour Scottish Executive as a centre for excellence. However, she pointed out cardiac surgery for the west of Scotland was not carried out on the premises at that time.

Dr Turner said: "This is disconcerting because they are a specialist centre. They took all the surgeons from Hairmyres [Hospital in South Lanarkshire] and Glasgow and put them all together. You wonder how mixing a whole lot of different personalities comes together."

She said she knew of patients treated at the hospital who had excellent results, but added: "When patients see figures like this they are always a bit worried about whether they have got access to the same expertise that is available in the rest of the UK."

Mortality rates for individual surgeons are also displayed on the society's website. Results for all but one of the adult cardiac surgeons working in Aberdeen and Edinburgh are available, but there is no information for most of the Golden Jubilee consultants.

The analysis showed death rates at the hospital were the third highest in the UK.

A senior surgeon, who did not wish to be named, said: "There was some surprise among the cardiac surgical community elsewhere in Scotland that for those working at the flagship Golden Jubilee there is no data available. How can patients know their individual surgeon's results?"

There were nearly 4000 operations performed at the Jubilee making it one of the busiest cardiac centres in Britain between 2008 and 2011 and the mortality rate published by the society was 4.14%. This compares to 3.06% in Aberdeen and 3.73% in Edinburgh and an average for 2010 of 3.27%.

Graphs produced by the audit show how much mortality rates are expected to range and the website explains hospitals would be expected to cluster around the average with less variation among those undertaking the most work.

In a statement, the Golden Jubilee said: "The data originally submitted for analysis to the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons was found to contain emergency procedures which should have been excluded. Once this was corrected, it changed the overall adjusted mortality for the period to 3.9%. This is within the spread of other UK units and not higher than expected by UK standards."

The hospital said improvements made following its internal review had resulted in mortality rates falling steadily since 2008 with figures for April to December last year showing a mortality rate of just over 2%.

Its medical director Mike Higgins said: "We work extremely hard to ensure that we provide first class care and treatment to our patients. Our most up to date figures show that our unit is performing well as a specialised regional and national heart centre."