Kingston Hospital’s top rating “well deserved” says MP

Kingston Hospital’s new rating as London’s top District General Hospital has been described as “well deserved” by Kingston and Surbiton’s Liberal Democrat MP, Edward Davey.

The rating comes in the newly-released Dr Foster’s 2009 Hospital Guide.

Kingston Hospital came 15th out of 149 Hospital Trusts in England, topping Band 4 and only fractionally missing out on a place in Band 5 with only a handful of other hospital trusts, many of which are large teaching hospitals not District Generals.

Unlike many of the official Government reports on hospitals, Dr Foster is an independent analysis rating hospital trusts from one to five, on a range of "safety indicators", including errors in surgery, deaths, infection rates and staffing levels. Kingston scored 90.41 out of 100 and has one of the country’s lowest mortality rates too.

Commenting, Edward Davey said:

“The public are understandably cynical now about all of the tables and statistics they read about, after so many years of Government-spin.

“But what marks these Dr Foster ratings out as something unique and significant is how genuinely independent and authoritative they are.

“So it makes Kingston Hospital’s excellent results even more significant.

“The Hospital and all its staff should be thanked and congratulated for all their hard work and dedication which brought about this achievement.

“With all the many concerns about the future of NHS funding, at least we can be reassured that our local hospital is the best local hospital in London.