 The NHS star ratings are controversial |
NHS star ratings used to rank hospitals across England have been slammed by top experts. Professor Nick Black and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine criticised the way the ratings were compiled.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said they failed to reflect how well patients were cared for.
The Commission for Health Improvement, which compiles the ratings, said it was planning to improve the system.
The NHS star ratings have been published every year for the past three years.
Hospitals are given hotel-style stars. The worst receive no stars while the best get three.
Their rating is based on how they have performed against a range of targets, such as waiting times, cleanliness of wards and trust finances.
Mortality rates
In this latest study, the researchers carried out a study to find out if the ratings had any relation to the care patients received.
 |  Patients do just as well in a trust with no stars as they do in one with three stars  |
They looked at the care given to adult patients who were critically ill when they were admitted to hospital.
They calculated the likelihood of a critically ill patient dying at each of the 102 hospitals they looked at.
They then compared this likelihood with the hospital's actual mortality rate.
The researchers found no correlation between the hospitals' star rating and the level of care given to patients.
"For adult critical care, star ratings do not reflect the quality of clinical care provided by hospitals," they said.
"Patients do just as well in a trust with no stars as they do in one with three stars."
Information
The researchers acknowledged that their study was limited because it looked at the care given to just one group of patients.
However, they said the findings raised questions about the government's claim that the star ratings gave patients information on the performance of their local hospital.
"If these findings reflect other areas of hospital care, the government is not yet fulfilling its commitment to provide patients and the general public with comprehensive, easily understandable information on the performance of their local health services."
They said the rating should in future be based in part on how well hospitals treated patients.
A spokesman for the Commission for Health Improvement, which compiles the star ratings, said: "We have always said that star ratings are far from perfect and we have always been committed to improving them.
"This report only focuses on intensive care, and we do look at more than just outcome indictors.
"We accept there is a lack of good quality data and we are looking at getting hold of that data."
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