THE chairman of the British Medical Association has said that it is important not to blame the Royal Bolton Hospital and to stop managers jumping through "hoops".

Dr Peter Hawker said that he is worried that the star-ratings will blight confidence in Bolton and hit recruitment.

He said: "Hospitals are complex organisations and the factors which contribute to high performance include the calibre of management, the quality of facilities and equipment available and the numbers and experience of clinical staff.

"Clearly, the public has a right to know how well hospitals are performing. We need to learn from the high performers and work to achieve uniformly high quality care across the whole hospital service.

Blight

"If I have a reservation, it centres on the accuracy of the data on which the star ratings are constructed. It is also imperative that we find a way out of the blame culture which blights our public services."

He added: "I worry that strident reporting of a hospital's weaknesses can dent the confidence of the community in its local hospital, adversely affect recruitment and further damage the morale of clinical staff.

"They become frustrated when factors beyond their control, such as bed numbers, nursing recruitment, cleaning contracts and artificial performance measures get in their way.

"We must not fall into the trap of creating yet more hoops for managers to jump through. In an over-stretched service, we need managers' energies focused on driving up quality, not on massaging the figures to please their masters higher up the command chain."