Maternity review "welcomed" (From Watford Observer)

Maternity review "welcomed"

3:06pm Thursday 10th July 2008

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The government's health watchdog has “urged” low-performing maternity services, including those at Watford General Hospital, to improve.

West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust's maternity unit received one of the lowest scores for performance in a Healthcare Commission report, published in January, and has been "urged" this week, alongside other Trusts, to “buck-up” its services.

The Trust hampered its own review by failing to provide complete data, which meant four categories automatically received the lowest score.

Due to the data failing, West Herts was rated as one of the “least well performing” in the country, with an overall rating of 1.958 out of five across three areas - clinical focus, women centred care and efficiency and capability.

The Trust received a rating of three out of five, which is deemed “acceptable”, to sectors including maternal morbidity, choice of antenatal care and choice of delivery method.

Although, a score of one out of five for staff training and experience levels, the number of women who wanted and received antenatal classes, and staffing levels, was handed down.

Since the report, the Trust has already recruited a tenth Obstetric and Gynaecology Consultant to provide more emergency and labour ward cover in women's services, set up a working party to implement changes and improvements to the service, and provided leadership development training to all senior midwives.

Eileen Whitehouse, of West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "We welcome the review and its very helpful recommendations for every maternity unit in the country. We have already implemented a number of them and are at work on others.

"We are very proud that we have achieved consistently low perinatal mortality rates for the last three years, currently, the lowest in the whole of the East of England at under one per 1,000 live births compared to a national average of over three."

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