12,000 died in our hospitals last year..and the HSE doesn't know if it's GOOD or BAD.

Byline: NIALL HUNTER

NEARLY 12,000 patients died in Irish hospitals last year, new figures showed yesterday.

However, the HSE has admitted that it does not have access to any statistics which would show whether the number of deaths occurring in any particular hospital are above or below the norm.

This data is normally thought to be of major importance in maintaining patient safety in a country's health service, but it does not appear to exist in any form in Ireland.

This means that patients currently have no way of comparing potential risks of treatment in different hospitals.

The independent health safety body, the Health Information and Quality Authority, said this type of information should be readily available to the HSE - and for the public to view.

Information obtained under Freedom of Information shows that 11,697 people died in Irish acute hospitals in 2008, compared to 11,967 in 2007. This compares to more than 9,400 patient deaths in hospitals recorded in 2002, the last year for which mortality figures were previously released to irishhealth.com Since then, hospitals would have recorded a considerable increase in activity levels. There were 892,634 discharges from acute hospitals in 2002 compared to 1,317,626 in 2007.

However, the total mortality numbers do not show the whole picture.

The HSE does not have current "hospital standardised mortality rates". These figures would show how much one hospital's death rates differ from the norm after adjustments are made to reflect the risk and complexity of a hospital's caseload.

The current lack of available data means that the HSE does not have any "alarm bell" system for hospitals that might have too high a rate.

A spokesman for the HIQA said it is vital that mortality and other standardised patient data of all individual hospitals should be made available to the public.

The HIQA spokesman said this type of data may in time become available when a hospital licensing system is put in place.