Board Meeting Agenda July 2012 - Birmingham Children's Hospital

Standardised Mortality Ratio (SMR)
In order to account for differences in case mix for different organisations the idea of standardised
mortality ratios has been developed. This attempts to account for differences in patients, such as
diagnosis, age and pre-existing medical problems, and allows for comparisons between hospitals.
A standardised mortality ratio (SMR) is the ratio of the actual number of deaths in a hospital within a
given time period, to the number that might be expected if the hospital had the same death rates as a
larger reference population (e.g. all English Hospitals).
The SMR scores can be presented in a number of ways.
Run Chart
This shows how the standardised
mortality rate of a hospital changes over
time. If there are a small number of
deaths in each time period then the
month to month variation can be quite
wide (as is the case with BCH where
there are on average 4-12 deaths a
month).
The spikes in April and May 2011’s SMR
have been reviewed and did not raise
any concerns. The SMR over the last year
has returned to normal levels.