Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership aims to be the first NHS Trust to review all deaths

Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership NHS Trust, the UK’s biggest provider of community health and adult social care, is aiming to be the first NHS Trust in the country to review all deaths.

There is currently no standard for measuring mortality in community trusts and rates vary across the country.

Deaths are reviewed in NHS organisations to get a better understanding of how care is being delivered and where improvements in safety and effectiveness in care can be made.

The Partnership Trust has already significantly improved the number of deaths it has reviewed, with 68 per cent of deaths reviewed during 2014-15, compared to 48 per cent of deaths the previous year. The vast majority of our deaths are among palliative care patients, and these reviews allow the Trust to ensure that the care which is being provided to our patients is the best that it can possibly be.

Dr James Shipman, Interim Medical Director at the Partnership Trust, said:

Reviewing mortality statistics can give an indication to the levels of quality and safety in the provision of care, and help identify causes of deaths that are avoidable through better, safer and more efficient or effective care delivery.”

He added that the trust had established a new taskforce to review every death which occurs.

With national backing from the Trust Development Authority, and support locally from colleagues and partners, the taskforce aims to revolutionise the quality and standards of care in the area – before disseminating the findings across the rest of the NHS.

“Our ambition is to review all deaths in our community hospitals and all unexpected deaths for patients in receipt of Trust services outside of our hospitals in order to determine what opportunities may arise to improve the quality of patient care”, Dr Shipman said.