SENIOR managers at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford, say the hospital meets every single standard set by the Government.

As part of an annual health check, overseen by the NHS watchdog, the Healthcare Commission, every hospital and primary care trust must declare how it thinks it is doing.

The NOC is the only NHS trust in Oxfordshire that ticked each of the 44 target boxes, which ranged from preventing infection, providing a choice of food and ensuring its staff received continuous training.

The Healthcare Commission said it would be cross-checking the results with the NHS's own figures - but Sara Randall, the NOC executive director of operations and performance, said the trust was confident it had met all the targets.

She added: "This shouldn't come as a surprise. The NOC takes great care in our standards of care, which helps us to consistently score well in similar assessments and is why we have a reputation as a centre for excellence."

According to the self-declaration data, which covered the 2006-7 financial year and was published today(MON), Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Healthcare Trust recorded the worst results in the county, admitting it had failed to meet six of the standards, including having poor child protection measures and insufficient measures to reduce infection.

A spokesman said two of these had now been met, and the other four would be met by the end of 2007.

He added: "We continue to take the care of our patients very seriously and everyone at the trust works hard to ensure we not only meet the standards but also improve our performance in all areas of patient care."

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Oxford's John Radcliffe and Churchill Hospitals and The Horton, Banbury, failed four of the standards.

Its directors admitted that infection control could have been better, after failing its reduction target last year, and patients were often not offered proper privacy and confidentiality.

Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust met all its targets, although it could not provide sufficient assurances that all medical devices used by its staff were properly decontaminated to prevent the spread of infection.

The Healthcare Commission's annual health check was launched last year to replace the NHS star ratings system.