A service that St Helier Hospital could lose under a controversial healthcare review has been declared the best in the country.

The hospital is providing elderly patients with fractured hips the best care in the country, according to a report comparing hospitals.

The National Hip Fracture Database puts St Helier Hospital top out of 180 hospitals for “best practice” with 93.5 per cent of hip patients receiving surgery within 48 hours of arriving at hospital – compared to a national average of 53 per cent.

However, if proposals by the Better Services Better Value (BSBV) healthcare review go ahead to close St Helier Hospital’s accident and emergency department – its hip fracture unit will no longer be able to operate.

Patients attending St Helier for hip fractures are usually brought in to A&E by ambulance.

Dr Nivi Singh, consultant orthogeriatrician at the hospital, said they ran a “dedicated” hip fracture unit within the hospital.

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Paul Burstow the MP for Sutton and Cheam congratulated the hospital and said: “BSBV could learn a thing or two from St Helier.

“While St Helier lead the way on fixing hips BSBV lead the way on trying to break up our local hospital.”

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Tom Brake, MP for Carshalton and Wallington, said: "I take my hat off to staff.  I always knew the care they provided was excellent, now we know that for hip fracture it is the best in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

"This excellent news just reinforces the foolishness of the plans to downgrade our hospital."

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Councillor Mary Burstow, chairwoman of the council’s health and well being scrutiny committee, said: “I just feel so proud of St Helier Hospital right now. They had really good financial results and now they’ve announced they’ve got this.

“It’s a brilliant hospital and it’s got every reason to feel proud and it’s demonstrating why it shouldn’t lose its A&E to BSBV.”

A BSBV spokesperson said: “Our task is to come up with proposals that deliver the best services and outcomes across all our hospitals.

"Our clinical working groups believe the best way to do this is to centralise key services in three major acute hospitals – not closing services, but beefing them up and in some cases relocating them.

"None of our hospitals currently meet all of the London Quality Standards, against which they will be commissioned in future. Our proposals aim to address this and deliver higher quality, sustainable services across the board.”