Publication, Part of Maternity Services Monthly Statistics

Maternity Services Monthly Statistics, April 2022, experimental statistics

Official statistics

Publication Date:: 28 Jul 2022
Geographic Coverage:: England
Geographical Granularity:: Country, Regions, Hospital Trusts, Provider, NHS Trusts, Integrated Care Boards, Sub-Integrated Care Boards, Local Authorities, Hospital and Community Health Services, Hospital Sites
Date Range:: 01 Apr 2022 to 30 Apr 2022

Current Chapter

View all

Next Chapter

Antenatal booking appointments

Summary

This statistical release makes available the most recent monthly data on NHS-funded maternity services in England, using data submitted to the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS).

This is the latest report from the newest version of the data set, MSDS.v.2, which has been in place since April 2019. The new data set was a significant change which added support for key policy initiatives such as continuity of carer, as well as increased flexibility through the introduction of new clinical coding. This was a major change, so data quality and coverage has initially reduced from the levels seen in previous publications.

The data derived from SNOMED codes is being used in some measures such as those for smoking at booking and birth weight, and others will follow in later publications. SNOMED data is also included in some of the published Clinical Quality Improvement Metrics (CQIMs), where rules have been applied to ensure measure rates are calculated only where data quality is high enough. System suppliers are at different stages of developing their new solution and delivering that to trusts. In some cases, this has limited the aspects of data that could be submitted to NHS Digital.

For the first time, last month we produced a measure counting the percentage of babies fully or partially breastfed between 6 and 8 weeks old. This measure has been incorporated into the Clinical Quality Improvement Metrics (CQIMs) and can be found in the Measures file available for download, and information on its construction can be found in the accompanying Metadata file. Due to variations in data quality and completeness these statistics may not accurately reflect the true number of babies breastfeeding between 6 and 8 weeks old, at this early stage of measure development.

The official statistics for breastfeeding prevalence at 6 to 8 weeks after birth are produced quarterly and annually by the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/child-and-maternal-health-statistics#breastfeeding-statistics. The new experimental NHS Digital CQIMBreastfeeding6to8weeks measure aims to begin to produce a comparable and more powerful statistic to that currently published by OHID. More detail can be found in the ‘Coherence and Comparability’ section of this publication’s Data Quality Statement.

To help Trusts understand to what extent they meet the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST) Data Quality Criteria for Safety Action 2, until the publication of July 2022 data we are producing two data files each month which contain information for data providers showing their performance against all MSDS-derived Safety Action 2 criteria. These are available for download alongside the main publication documents below.

These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics undergoing evaluation. More information about experimental statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website.

Key Facts

122 successful submissions

For April 2022 data, 122 providers successfully submitted data with 122 submitting data on births.

This is all expected from NHS trusts

53,920 bookings in April 2022

53,920 women with an antenatal booking appointment were reported in the period, of which 56% were within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.

Of the trusts that submitted booking data, there were 30,235 bookings in which the babies' gestational age was in the 0-70 days range.

43,305 births reported

We received data relating to 42,720 deliveries of 43,305 babies.

We have removed information about external data source counts of birth due to their lack of comparability with MSDS figures. We are investigating a more robust and appropriate replacement, and will reinstate a comparison when this work is complete.

52% of deliveries were spontaneous

52% of deliveries were spontaneous vaginal births, 11% had instrumental assistance, 15% were elective caesarean sections and 21% were emergency caesarean sections.

Administrative Sources

Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS): this is a patient-level data set that captures information about activity carried out by Maternity Services relating to a mother and baby(s), from the point of the first booking appointment until mother and baby(s) are discharged from maternity services. This is a secondary uses data set, which re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care.