This is a report on NHS-funded maternity services in England for February 2017, using data submitted to the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS). The MSDS has been developed to help achieve better outcomes of care for mothers, babies and children.
The MSDS is a patient-level 'secondary uses' data set that re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care, such as commissioning, clinical audit. It captures key information at each stage of the maternity service care pathway in NHS-funded maternity services, such as those provided by GP practices and hospitals. The data collected include mother's demographics, booking appointments, admissions and re-admissions, screening tests, labour and delivery along with baby's demographics, diagnoses and screening tests.
As part of this month's publication we are also publishing additional Excel spreadsheets presenting analysis of smoking status at delivery and maternal critical incidents including post-partum haemorrhage for births recorded in January 2017. The analysis of smoking status at delivery includes comparison of data from October - December 2016 with the quarterly Smoking at Time of Delivery (SATOD) collection data for the same period.
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.
Correction: on 7 July 2017, the "Postpartum haemorrhage and other maternal critical incidents" file was replaced. This was due to a minor error in the descriptive text in the "key facts" tab. Two different numbers were given for the same "between 1,000ml and 1,499ml" measure; one of these should have said "between 500ml and 999ml". The data tables are unaffected.