ACCIDENT victims are more likely to die at the Royal Liverpool Hospital than anywhere else in England, shock new figures have revealed.

The survival rate at the city's main hospital is the lowest in the country, according to research released to a study that condemned the lack of care at night and at weekends in casualty departments.

But last night hospital chiefs urged patients not to panic, saying the figures submitted were incomplete and did not reflect the whole picture.

Up to 600 lives a year could be saved if “unacceptable variation” in the treatment of people injured on the road or in falls was tackled, the National Audit Office (NAO) found. Its report raised the alarm over huge disparities in the number of “unexpected survivors” or “unexpected deaths”, per 100 patients.

The Royal Liverpool is rock bottom of a comparison produced by the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN), a research foundation set up to improve accident and emergency services.

According to TARN, there were 6.2 unexpected deaths per 100 patients at the Royal over a three-year period to the end of December last year, once statistical adjustments had been made for the area it covers.

That was significantly worse than the next lowest survival rates, at the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth (5.4 per 100), Pinderfields General Hospital, Wakefield (4.3 per 100) and City Hospital Birmingham (3.3 per 100).

And it was in stark contrast to other local hospitals which boasted unanticipated survivors, per 100 patients, including at Wirral University Teaching Hospital (3.3), Warrington Hospital (3.1) and Walton Centre for Neurology (2.6).

But a spokeswoman for the Royal said that only 60% of hospital trusts which deal with major trauma submitted data.

Every year, 10,000 people die after injury, across England and Wales – the leading cause of death among children and young adults – with many more thousands left severely disabled.

Now the NAO investigation has found that many die simply because they suffer accidents and injuries at night or at weekends – when emergency consultants are not at work, to provide rapid diagnosis and treatment.

Only one hospital in the entire country – the John Radcliffe, in Oxford – had the necessary specialist consultant cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week, its report said.

Edward Leigh, the Conservative chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said: “For more than 20 years, almost nothing has been done to remedy the lamentable provision of care for people suffering serious injuries.