NHS Trust risk ratings Band 1 is considered the highest risk and band 6 the lowest

Click column heading to sort Hospital Risk Rating Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Airedale NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Alder Hey Children's NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 1 Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Barts Health NHS Trust Band 2 Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Bedford Hospital NHS Trust Band 4 Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Bolton NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust Band 1 Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Croydon Health Services NHS Trust Band 1 Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust Band 5 Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Ealing Hospital NHS Trust Band 3 East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust Band 3 East Cheshire NHS Trust Band 5 East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust Band 1 East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust Band 2 Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 6 Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust Band 1 Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust Band 4 Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust Band 2 Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust Band 4 Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust Band 2 Isle of Wight NHS Trust Band 4 James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Band 1 Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Band 2 Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Luton and Dunstable University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust Band 5 Medway NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust Band 3 Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 North Bristol NHS Trust Band 5 North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 1 North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust Band 6 North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 North West London Hospitals NHS Trust Band 2 Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust Band 1 Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust Band 5 Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 2 Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust Band 4 Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust Band 4 Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust Band 5 Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust Band 6 Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust Band 5 Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust Band 2 Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust Band 4 Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust Band 2 South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 South London Healthcare NHS Trust Band 1 South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust Band 4 St George's Healthcare NHS Trust Band 6 St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 Stockport NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust Band 6 Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 The Christie NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 The Hillingdon Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 The Newcastle-upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust Band 5 The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 The Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 1 The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust Band 5 The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust Band 4 United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust Band 1 University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust Band 5 University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust Band 2 University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust Band 3 University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust Band 4 University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust Band 1 University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust Band 6 Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust Band 3 West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust Band 2 West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Band 6 Weston Area Health NHS Trust Band 2 Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust Band 6 Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust Band 4 Wye Valley NHS Trust Band 4 Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5 York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Band 5

One in four NHS hospitals is a cause for concern over the quality or safety of the care it provides to patients, the service's statutory watchdog has warned.

In an analysis of all 161 acute hospital trusts in England – the most comprehensive ever carried out – the Care Quality Commission (CQC) says it is worried about aspects of care at 44 (27.3%) of them.

Performance in some areas is so inadequate that it poses a risk or an elevated risk to patients.

The sheer number of hospitals about which the regulator is concerned dwarfs the 14 trusts that Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS's medical director, investigated earlier this year. Eleven of those 14 were put into special measures as a result of inadequacies he uncovered.

The CQC examined 150 national, NHS-wide measures of quality and safety of care in a new assessment system it calls "intelligent monitoring".

It then put all 161 trusts into one of six bands, each of which includes those deemed a higher or lower risk, on the basis of the evidence.

CQC analysts have assigned the trusts into the bands – one is the most worrying and six the least – on the basis of how well they were doing judged by many criteria. There are 24 trusts in band one and 20 in band two, which are the only two categories the CQC is concerned about. Intelligent monitoring will guide the regulator in deciding which hospitals to inspect most urgently.

The 24 include the 11 trusts in special measures, those that are already being investigated by the CQC's much more in-depth and forensic inspection regime which it has developed after the Mid Staffordshire hospital care scandal, and some of the next 19, which it will inspect from January.

The criteria include waiting times for treatment in A&E, after referral by a GP and for cancer; patients' trust in the doctors and nurses; rates of hospital-acquired infections and stroke patients scanned within an hour of arrival; patient safety incidents and "never" events (incidents such as amputating the wrong limb that should never happen); management of patients' pain; and how much help was provided to someone to help them eat their meal.

The CQC calls these "smoke detectors", which help alert them to hospitals that are outside the expected range of performance in a particular area, which also include several types of mortality rates.

Taking trusts' scores in those 150 areas, it has categorised band one as including those at which performance is 7.5% below the norm. Band two contains trusts at 5.5% below the norm, at band three it is 4.5% below (31 trusts), at band four it is 3.5% below (25 trusts) and in band five it is 2.5% below (24 trusts). By contrast, there are 37 trusts in band six, where performance is typically 2% above the norm.

The Patients Association said the CQC's concerns about the 44 trusts were hugely worrying but also not a major surprise, given the evidence it collects about poor care and safety breaches.

"It's hugely worrying that there's such a high number of trusts where the CQC has concerns about the quality and safety of the care being delivered. But it doesn't come as much of a surprise because we know from our work that elements of poor care are widespread in the NHS," said Katherine Murphy, the charity's chief executive, who is an ex-NHS nurse and manager.

"We don't think there's any hospital that's providing 100% high-quality, safe care. Calls to our helpline tell us that things like misdiagnosis, cancelled operations and poor care in hospital, especially elderly patients not being cared for with the compassion and dignity they deserve, happen frequently in hospitals all over the country. This problem is so endemic in the NHS," she added.

Professor Sir Mike Richards, the CQC's chief inspector of hospitals, told the Guardian: "This information highlights the hospitals where we have potential concerns about the quality and safety of services. Our greatest concerns focus on the 24 trusts in band one, which we have prioritised for inspections."

Richards, a distinguished oncologist and ex-cancer tsar, used a medical analogy to convey the purpose of the new intelligent monitoring system.

"As a doctor, I liken intelligent monitoring to a screening test. Our inspection, combined with intelligent monitoring, provides the diagnosis, following which we make a judgment, which in turn leads to action," he explained.

Matt Tee, chief operating officer of the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said the CQC's use of 150 measures of performance had helped it devise "a robust process for identifying which organisations should be prioritised for external inspection".

However, he urged the regulator to use in its monitoring only information that is already available, in order not to divert valuable staff time and resources away from patient care.

Lisa Jordan, national head of medical negligence at law firm Irwin Mitchell, said the CQC's finding were very worrying.

"Every effort must now be made to assess the findings of the CQC's analysis to consider what steps can be taken to ensure that standards of safe, quality care are offered across the entire NHS," she said.

"Patient safety must be at the heart of all changes made to the NHS and a strong reaction to this study is needed to rebuild public confidence and trust following a difficult few months for the service."