CQC Report into Maternity Care
Carla Duprey, Solicitor in the Clinical Negligence Department at Been Let Down, analyses a report into maternity care in the UK to determine if there is a high risk of birth injury in NHS England hospitals.
Care Quality Commission (CQC) report into maternity services
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) have recently published a report on maternity care in England 2022 to 2024. They initially acknowledge that the quality and safety of maternity services has been under scrutiny for a number of years. However, sadly, they have found that many of the issues that have been identified during the investigations into specific NHS Trusts in recent years, are widespread across the maternity services in England.
What does the report into maternity care say?
The report confirms that, ‘Of the 131 locations we inspected between August 2022 and December 2023, almost half were rated as requires improvement (36%) or inadequate (12%)’ and that ‘The safety of maternity services remains a key concern, with no services inspected as part of our inspection programme rated as outstanding for being safe. Almost half (47%) were rated as requires improvement for the safe key question, while 35% were rated as good and 18% were rated as inadequate’.
The CQC noted that they were concerned about ‘the potential normalising of serious harm in maternity’. The Charity, Birth Rights, have commented that ‘Harm is not ‘at risk’ of being normalised in maternity care; it already is’.
Carla Duprey, Solicitor in the Clinical Negligence department, comments:
“Upsettingly, I believe this is true. The CQC itself acknowledges that the key issues impacting the quality and safety of care are not new. The key issues they found are: ‘Poor management of incidents with limited learning when things go wrong, failure to ensure safe and timely assessment at triage, unsuitable estates and access to essential equipment, a lack of oversight from trust Boards and significant challenges in recruiting and retaining staff’. There is also continued ‘inequalities in outcome and additional risks experienced by women from Black and ethnic groups’ and ‘Significant concerns also remain regarding the quality of communication with women and their families, and a failure to engage with and listen to their needs’.
The CQC have set out recommendations within the report, which it believes would improve care and safety. However, Gill Walton, of the Royal College of Midwives, has been quoted as saying, “Despite these recurrent themes, nothing has fundamentally changed…We’re calling on the government to draw a line under this here and now, to work with us on resolving these problems and to build maternity services we can all be proud of.”
It appears to me that a lot of the issues are core problems within the NHS and are not able to be rectified easily. Funding and staff recruitment are major issues. However, as many Clinical Negligence Practitioners have pointed out in the past, if the NHS developed a system to report and learn from incidents, then I believe this would be a first step to improving the overall service. People learn from their mistakes, if they are aware of them and are educated on how to avoid them going forward.”
How Been Let Down can help you
If you’re thinking of pursuing a birth injury negligence claim, you can rest assured that we’ll be with you every step of the way.
We have successfully supported many families with compensation cases of this type, handling every detail with strict professionalism. Our team aims to achieve the best possible outcome for both you and your child to cover the costs of rehabilitation, care, and any home adaptation required after birth injury.
Contact us today to make your birth injury claim
Our medical negligence experts are here to help you get the birth injury negligence compensation you deserve. Get in touch now and help us to show you that there is a way to move on after birth injury.
Call us on 0800 234 3234 or contact us online and a member of our legal team will call you back.
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