Maternity Services Website For Parents Launched
The new website enables users to get comprehensive information about their local maternity service. The new site allows people to easily search for and access information on each trust, and see how they scored on three key questions:
- Are practices in place to help ensure a high quality and effective maternity service?
- Are women informed, counselled and supported to ensure they have a positive maternity experience?
- Is there adequate staffing and facilities and are these used effectively?
The website also gives trusts' maternity services a score out of five on 25 different areas, including how well each local trust provided recommended antenatal screening, on appropriate use of caesarean sections and on the quality of support they offered parents in caring for the baby after discharge.
People can search the website for their local trust by place name or postcode.
Sue Eardley, Maternity Services Project Lead at the Healthcare Commission, said: "Around 600,000 women give birth in England every year, and choosing where and how to give birth is an important decision. We know that patients want comparative information, and we are delighted to offer this new online guide to expectant mothers and their partners.
"We hope that parents will be able to use this information to improve their experience both before, during and after the baby is born. For example, if a trust scored relatively poorly in offering recommended screening, we hope women will use this information to discuss with their midwives which tests are available at their trust.
"It's important for expectant mothers and their partners to know that if a trust is rated as "least well performing", it does not mean that a service is unsafe. If we believed any unit to be unsafe, we would take immediate action to ensure mothers and babies were protected."
The website can be found at www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/maternity.cfm
The Healthcare Commission is committed to publishing the results of its work in a way that is relevant and accessible to the public. In addition to maternity, it already offers similar websites for diabetes and heart surgery, and in future will also provide this for mental health services.
Notes
About the review
This maternity services review was published in January 2008. It was based on the Healthcare Commission's survey of mothers who gave birth in February 2007 and information provided by trusts to provide an assessment of the services in place and outcomes for women.
The indicators used in the review were designed to assess services that all trusts would normally be expected to deliver.
Please note that percentages for numbers of trusts in each category add up to 101% due to rounding. Each trust was ranked in relation to one another on the following scale:
- Least well performing
The Commission found that the organisation's maternity service did not perform as well as services in many other organisations in a number of key areas, and needs to improve. This does not necessarily mean that the organisation is providing care that is unsafe. If we have concerns that a trust is unsafe, we use our powers of enforcement by, for example, carrying out an investigation.
- Fair performing
The Commission found that the organisation's maternity service did not perform as well as services in many other organisations in one or more key areas, and needs to improve.
- Better performing
The Commission found that the organisation's maternity service was better in some areas than services in many other organisations. Nevertheless, there were areas where it could improve.
- Best performing
The Commission found that the organisation's maternity service was better in a number of areas than services in most other organisations.
The new website displays a clear breakdown of results. Each trust was given a mark from 1 - 5, (5 represents the highest score), for each of the following 25 areas assessed:
Clinical focus:
- Women not receiving NICE recommended number of antenatal appointments
- Availability of NICE recommended screening
- Appropriate use of caesarean sections
- Maternal morbidity
- Postnatal care of women and babies
- Progress on implementing mental health NICE guidance
- Extent that staff are trained in core maternity skills
- Teamworking and supervision
Women centred care:
- Average time between first making contact and booking appointment
- and continuity for antenatal care
- Percentage of women offered an informed choice for screening tests
- Percentage of women attending NHS antenatal classes who wanted to
- Extent of choice in labour
- Support for infant feeding
- Quality of support in caring for the baby after discharge
- Stakeholder involvement in service planning and evaluation
Efficiency and capability:
- Staffing levels
- Integration of support workers
- Average cost per delivery
- Delivery of hospital based antenatal care
- Data quality
- Appropriate involvement of obstetricians and midwives in antenatal care
- Percentage of women who considered their length of stay was about right
- Homeliness of delivery rooms
- Women's view of cleanliness of delivery and postnatal areas
Information on the Healthcare Commission
The Healthcare Commission is the health watchdog in England. It checks on health services to ensure that they are meeting standards in a range of areas. The Commission also promotes improvements in the quality of healthcare and public health in England through independent, authoritative, patient-centred assessments of those who provide services.
Responsibility for inspection and investigation of NHS bodies and the independent sector in Wales rests with Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW). The Healthcare Commission has certain statutory functions in Wales which include producing an annual report on the state of healthcare in England and Wales, national improvement reviews in England and Wales, and working with HIW to ensure that relevant cross-border issues are managed effectively.
The Healthcare Commission does not cover Scotland as it has its own body, NHS Quality Improvement Scotland. The Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) undertakes regular reviews of the quality of services in Northern Ireland.
Healthcare Commission
Servicii de maternitate a lansat site-ul pentru parinti - Maternity Services Website For Parents Launched - articole medicale engleza - startsanatate