A MAJOR Merseyside health trust is considering legal action after it was said to be significantly under-performing.

The 2009 Dr Foster Hospital Guide ranks St Helens and Knowsley NHS Hospitals Trust, which runs St Helens and Whiston hospitals, as one of the 12 poorest scoring when it comes to patient safety.

However the trust’s medical director last night hit back saying the researchers responsible “incorrectly excluded” positive data which would have improved its ranking.

In a message to staff, chiefs said the information was based solely on the level of reporting patient safety incidents.

They insisted in that time period the National Patient Safety Agency failed to collate the trust’s submitted data due to two incompatible computer systems, leading Dr Foster to conclude the trust was under-reporting and, therefore, lacking focus on patient safety.

Dr Foster is a part-private, part-NHS organisation which compiles the guide using 13 measures of safety; including the speed of response to incidents, the ratio of hospital beds to staff and a range of death rates, including those of people admitted for low-risk procedures and for stroke and heart attack patients.

St Helens and Knowsley Trust was rated “excellent” by the independent regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC), prompting accusations from the Conservative Party the NHS safety regime was “fatally flawed”.

Of the others at the bottom of the table, four had been classified by the CQC as “fair” and seven as “good”.

The commission insisted that its analysis of trusts was reliable and said some of the Dr Foster data was “flaky”.

Health minister Mike O’Brien questioned the findings and several trusts among those named and shamed accused Dr Foster of using incomplete figures which failed to show the true picture.

Dr Foster has stood by its analysis but CQC chair Baroness Young said some of the data was “quite alarmist”.

“Where they are good we will take them to account in our regulatory work and where they are flaky, we won’t,” she said insisting the official watchdog’s regime was far more detailed.