Two West Cheshire hospitals have been branded ‘poor’ for failing to report patient safety incidents in an ‘open and honest’ manner.

Countess of Chester and Ellesmere Port Hospitals received the rating from the Department of Health (DH) and NHS England.

Ellesmere Port Hospital

Safety incidents include medical errors resulting in injury, suffering, disability or death in patients and failure to protect NHS whistleblowers when they raise the alarm.

New data launched on an NHS website reveals which trusts are either ‘good’, ‘okay’ or ‘poor’ for hitting five important safety targets.

Targets include potential underreporting of patient safety incidents, possible underreporting of incidents leading to death or severe harm and potential under-reporting of accidents which resulted in no harm.

A further two targets include reporting incidents to the National Reporting and Learning System and how staff feel the trust responds to safety incidents.

Across the country 81 hospitals were good, 272 okay and 113 poor.

DH said the website reveals ‘concerns’ about reporting incidents at one in five acute trusts across the country.

A spokesman said: “Concerns are raised when a trust may not be reporting enough incidents, not reporting these events often enough or where staff feel that the organisation is not responding to incident reports as well as they could.”

Tony Chambers, chief executive at Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said over the past year it had signed up to schemes to encourage staff and patients to raise the alarm over poor practice and to protect whistleblowers.

He said: “We are making inroads, but we will always have more to understand, more to do and more to improve.

“We are constantly reviewing our reporting arrangements, particularly relating to patient safety incidents.

“We are confident that our culture of reporting is improving which we believe will be reflected as we go forward.”

Over the past year the trust has pumped an extra �1m into nursing.

Jonathan Taylor, service manager Healthwatch Cheshire West said: “Of course it is concerning for patients and the public when they read that their local hospitals have been rated as poor in relation to open and honest reporting of patient safety incidents.

“We have expressed our concern about these ratings and what they mean for patients, and have discussed the reasons for them.

“Whilst a website enabling patients to see how well their local hospital is performing on key safety measures is a positive step, it is very important that the ratings are understood in context.

“This particular rating does not describe whether the hospitals are safe, but rather gives an indication about the patient safety incident reporting culture – and importantly the method of recording – something which is affected by a range of factors.”

The NHS website can be found at www.nhs.uk .