UK health watchdog the Healthcare Commission has published its in-depth analysis of the performance of England’s 394 NHS trusts across a range of categories over the past year.
The commission assessed the trusts on a series of criteria, focusing on quality of service and use of resources.
Each trust was graded either excellent, good, fair or weak.
The quality of services measure included patient access, safety and the way services are run.
The ratings reflect how well the organisation met basic standards of care and how it performed against existing and new national targets.
The resources measure gauged financial performance – not just whether the trust was in debt – and included how spending was monitored and value-for-money issues.
More than half of mental health trusts received a score of excellent for quality of services, and 55% received a score of excellent or good for use of resources.
The performance of primary care trusts was the poorest for the second year running.
There are four Healthcare Commission regions: Central, London and South East, South West and North.
The Central region performed best for quality of services, with 21% of trusts scoring excellent, and a further 29% scoring good.
The South West region performed least well, with only 19% of trusts scoring good, and 16% scoring weak.
In terms of use of resources, the North region performed best, with 46% of trusts scoring excellent or good and 16% scoring weak.
London and South East performed least well with 34% of trusts scoring weak, and only 10% scoring excellent.
The Central region fares well in the new-style assessment, with the highest percentage of organisations achieving an excellent or good ranking for quality of services, and the lowest percentage of weak rankings.
The South West has the highest percentage of organisations ranked weak.
On use of resources, the North region, which has the largest number of high-performing foundation trusts, fares best.
Last year, only two organisations scored Excellent for both quality of services and use of resources. This year 19 achieved excellence in both categories, including the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust for the second year running.
A total of 20 trusts scored weak in both sectors, compared to 24 last year.
