Leeds General Infirmary: not 'twice the average death rate' but safe

Last April, citing death rates "twice the national average," NHS England suspended care at Leeds General Infirmary's children's heart unit.

Today, an NHS England Review concludes:

"this unit does not have an excessive mortality and is not an outlier with regard to other Units."

That follows an initial review last April, after which Sir Bruce Keogh said he had acted on "inaccurate data".

Concerns about the care there had also been raised by families of patients and another NHS Trust. An interview-based Family Experience Review included in today's report did find "issues with care and compassion within the trust."

We explained at the time that the hotly-contested "twice the national average" claim was based on initial, unpublished, and unaudited data. It takes a lot of work to generate figures that can reliably be compared between hospitals.

Strong claims made with weak statistics won't always stand up to further scrutiny. Where, as in this case, decisions have to be taken on limited data, the decision-makers might benefit from making those limits clear from the outset.