The BRI: better food, but room for improvement on its cleanliness

Every hospital in England has just been given a "traffic light" rating by the Department of Health based on a series of inspections.

And a total of 17 hospitals under the control of the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority were awarded "double green" scores, meaning they have high standards which almost always meet patient expectations.

But some critics of the system say its results bear little relation to patients' experiences.

They point to a recent NHS patient survey which highlighted concerns over hospital cleanliness - more than one in ten thought the toilet on their ward was dirty, and 7% thought the ward itself was not clean.

The clean hospital programme should be prosecuted under the trade description act. It is nothing of the sort Dr Evan Harris MP Liberal Democrat health spokesman

Under the traffic light system, green denotes high standards which almost always meet patient expectations, amber means acceptable standards which have room for improvement and red, poor standards in need of urgent improvement.

On the plus side, the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BRI) saw their food ratings jump from amber to green.

And Weston General Hospital saw its cleanliness rating move from amber to green, as did a number of smaller hospitals, including Thornbury in South Gloucestershire and Dilke Memorial in Gloucestershire.

'High quality'

But the BRI maintained an amber rating for cleanliness, on which the Trowbridge Community and Savernake hospitals both dropped from green to amber.

And for food standards, Chippenham, Devizes, Savernake and Malmesbury Community hospitals all dropped from green to amber.

Philip Milner, director of policy and partnerships for the Strategic Health Authority said: "These latest results show that we have made enormous progress towards consistently high quality hospital services that are well-regarded by patients."

Weston Hospital: much cleaner this year

But Liberal Democrat health spokesman Dr Evan Harris MP, added: "The clean hospital programme should be prosecuted under the trade description act. It is nothing of the sort.

"It covers different standards of which only one is about cleanliness and none are about the control of infection."

He added: "The government regularly uses the clean hospital programme as evidence that they are tackling the problem.

"The reality is that this measure should give no-one cause for confidence. It measures the wrong things and fails to measure them well."