Airedale Hospital has received special praise from a health firm after being shortlisted for hospital of the year for the second time in three years.

It also recorded the lowest death rate in the whole of the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was also highlighted for its relatively low mortality rate in a report by health information organisation Dr Foster.

The guide, which looks at a number of specialities including stroke and hip replacement, shows a wide variation in hospital death rates across the UK.

Over a three year period Airedale recorded a patient death rate twenty per cent lower than expected .

Staff also improved the mortality rate by two per cent on the previous year.

At Bradford there was an 11 per cent improvement on its death rate over three years and figures revealed it was 16 per cent lower than expected when compared to a similar size organisation.

A spokesman for Dr Foster said: "Airedale performed well against most of the indicators and is a small hospital with just 438 beds."

They were aware of the hospital's financial crisis - it has notched up a £6 million debt. Many of the trust's top staff have left this year and only this week the board heard of a recruitment freeze and efficiencies which will save the equivalent of a whole ward worth of beds.

Airedale's new chief executive Adam Cairns has brought in radical changes in the way the hospital is managed in a bid to take the trust out of the red.

Commenting on the Dr Foster report, he said today: "Our most important asset is our people. Many have been here for years and our staff turnover is very low.

"This is a tribute that all our staff should feel proud of and I would like to thank them for their hard work and dedication."

He said one of the recent changes was in procedures for outpatients and elective surgery to make the service more responsive to their needs. But the report also reveals that Airedale patients have to wait an average of 217 days for a routine hip operation compared with 130 in Bradford.

Bradford records the longest wait in the region for people admitted as an emergency with a broken hip. Only 50 per cent of patients are operated on within 48 hours.

Eighty per cent of patients in Airedale's catchment area have their surgery for emergency hip operations within 48 hours.

Bradford diagnoses all stroke victims, using CT scan, within 24 hours of being admitted compared to 79 per cent

in Airedale.

It also does better in giving heart attack victims clot busting drugs within 30 minutes of admission.