Patients to seek private medical cover as alternative to NHS following Dr Foster report?

More people may be encouraged to take out private medical cover following a report revealing higher than expected death rates in several NHS hospitals.

The Dr Foster report, which assessed 147 hospital trusts in England, found that 19 of them had patient death rates greater than expected over the past year.

Furthermore, two of them - Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust and the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust - were among four trusts which recorded a high number of deaths after surgery.

The Dr Foster report also revealed that a number of NHS patients suffer from hospital errors and oversights.

It says that 30,500 patients developed avoidable blood clots and more than 13,000 mothers suffered tears during childbirth.

Meanwhile, there were nearly 10,000 accidental cuts or punctures, 56 incidents of 'wrong site' surgery and 150 'foreign objects' left inside patients after an operation.

Commenting on the report, Patients Association chief executive Katherine Murphy said: "Safety is still clearly not the top priority of every NHS organisation and it absolutely should be.

"We are deeply concerned by the high number of adverse events and the wide variation of mortality ratios that this report highlights."

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