Death rates at the three hospitals in West Herts - including St Albans City - are among the lowest in the country.

The West Herts Hospitals Trust, which also runs Watford General and Hemel Hempstead Hospitals, has been recognised as one of just 17 hospitals in England to have a ‘lower than expected’ mortality rate.

The statistics, announced by the government’s Health & Social Information Centre, cover the whole of 2014 and are based on a measure which compares the number of patients who die in a hospital with the number that would be expected to do so.

The report covers 137 hospitals nationally, of which West Herts is in the best performing group. Eleven trusts had a ‘higher than expected’ mortality rate, with the remaining 109 having an ‘expected’ rate.

Dr Mike van der Watt, the trust’s medical director, said, “This is extremely pleasing news. Reducing death rates is the result of thousands of small pieces of work to improve patient safety, all coming together, but particularly, I feel, our investment in more consultants so that a greater proportion of care for patients has been directly supervised by consultants.”

He added: “We have moved from being in the worst 10 per cent of hospitals to be in the company of a small group of some of the best hospitals in this country. We know we have more work to do and will continue to work with our partners to improve things even more.”