§ Mr. FlynnTo ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 3 February 1998,Official Report, column 3 what contribution the number of patient deaths caused by failures of NHS services will play in his future assessment of the quality of NHS services. [28196]
§ Mr. MilburnWe are committed to improving the quality of National Health Service care and to minimising avoidable and premature deaths, whatever their causes. We are consulting on a new National Framework for Assessing Performance in the NHS and on an associated set of high-level performance indicators. The proposed 61W high-level indicators include "avoidable deaths" and "in-hospital premature deaths", though neither necessarily relates directly to failures of NHS services.