AIREDALE Hospital has been given the lowest 'red' ranking for infection control and cleanliness in a national patient safety report released by the NHS.

But the NHS Foundation Trust insists it is working to improve standards.

The hospital scores 'green' on some key safety issues, including how patients are assessed for blood clots and patient safety reporting.

And it has achieved 'green' over Care Quality Commission national standards, which is the result of a previous inspection and cannot be changed until the hospital is re-inspected.

The new patient safety statistics are being released by the NHS in an attempt to give patients the information they need to make judgments about where to go when they need medical treatment in future.

According to the NHS, "patient safety issues are the avoidable errors in healthcare that can cause harm to patients. Harm in this context means injury, suffering, disability or death."

Rob Dearden, director of nursing at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Patient safety remains a top priority at Airedale and we have a strong incident reporting culture where we encourage staff to report all patient safety issues and concerns.

“It is vital that we are continually scrutinising all aspects of our care so that we are able to act upon any patient safety issues quickly and make the necessary changes to prevent them happening again.

“Our staff work extremely hard to reduce the likelihood of serious infections, like MRSA and C Diff, and we face tough targets due to our high performance at preventing infection and very low rates of infection overall. Staff will continue to do everything they can to fight infection.

“Being open and honest with our local community about how we care for their family and friends is important to us and part of that is being transparent about all aspects of our care, including our nurse staffing levels," he said.