Professor John Robertson OBA

Once again Public Health Scotland publish figures showing that all of Scotland’s hospitals are operating with the same high safety levels as each other. In the above chart we can see that all bar one, from the smaller hospitals on the left, to the giant Queen Elisabeth University Hospital on the right, no hospitals had a significantly higher standardised mortality ratio than the national average.

From Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratios July 2024 to June 2025, published yesterday, the above graph and:

For the period July 2024 to June 2025:

HSMR is a risk-adjusted hospital mortality measure which has an important role to play in facilitating a critical examination of the quality of care and patient safety in Scottish Hospitals.

No hospitals had a significantly higher standardised mortality ratio than the national average. No hospitals had a significantly lower standardised mortality ratio than the national average. The standardised mortality ratio for Western General Hospital, NHS Lothian (0.84) is below the lower warning limit.

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/hospital-standardised-mortality-ratios/hospital-standardised-mortality-ratios-july-2024-to-june-2025/

Looking at the mortality ratios, we find, as we should, all of the hospitals with ratios very close to 1 – observed deaths almost identical to predicted deaths. In NHS Scotland, only one hospital has a ratio over 1.1, and that’s 1.12 for The Balfour in Orkney where the small number of cases, c100 annually, make it vulnerable to statistical spiking.

Things are different in NHS England, where 31 hospitals have ratios over 1.1, 5 of them over 1.2.

For example, in places like the Plymouth, North Midlands, Coventry, County Durham and East Cheshire (Liverpool) we see hospitals with as many 800 more deaths than predicted, in one year.

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/shmi/2025-10/shmi-data

There is no hospital in Scotland you need fear attending but in England, 31 you might be wary of and 5 you really need to stay away from.