Professor John Robertson OBA

From Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios, published today, the above funnel plot graph and:

For the period January 2024 to December 2024:

No hospitals had a significantly higher or lower standardised mortality ratio (SMR) than the national average.

Two hospitals had an SMR below the lower warning limit: Raigmore (0.84) and Western General (0.82).

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/hospital-standardised-mortality-ratios/hospital-standardised-mortality-ratios-january-2024-to-december-2024

In plain language, this means that all of Scotland’s had, as in previous years, roughly the same mortality ratio, the actual number of deaths divided by the number predicted by NHS statisticians, based on the varying populations they serve, in terms of age, poverty etc.

Those below the blue line had fewer deaths than predicted, including the often maligned by ill-informed media, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow (extreme right).

From a national perspective the tight clustering of the dots tells you that all of Scotland’s hospitals are safe and roughly as safe as each other. There is no postcode lottery operating here.

How does this compare with NHS England?

The vertical scale is different making the above look even more scattered than it is but there are signs of a postcode lottery in the contrast between the hospitals with the lowest mortality rate – 0.69 in Chelsea and Westminster – and the cluster of around 12 in other affluent areas below 0.8 with the worst rate of 1.3 in Chesterfield and a cluster of 8-14 hospitals in more deprived areas above 1.2.

In sharp contrast, all ,bar one very small hospital in Scotland at 0.66, consistently lie between 0.8 and 1.15.