Maternity Services Monthly Statistics, Final February 2025, Provisional March 2025, official statistics

Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS) v2.0 is an update to the existing data set that introduces a new structure and content, including clinical terminology, in order to meet current clinical practice and incorporate new requirements. MSDS v2.0 also mandates the submission of all maternity records in scope of the data set, including records that are held on paper which must be submitted in the required electronic format.

MSDS v2.0 is designed to meet requirements that resulted from the National Maternity Review, which led to the publication of the Better Births report in February 2016. Better Births highlighted the need for maternity services in England to become safer, more personalised and provide better access to information for pregnant women. The publication of Better Births resulted in the establishment of the Maternity Transformation Programme, and the updated version of the data set forms part of the ‘Sharing Data and Information’ workstream of the programme.

The previous version of the dataset, MSDSv1.5 ceased collection with March 2019 data that was published in June 2019.

From April 2019 data, the MSDS has been collected via the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) Cloud. Prior to this, MSDS data was collected via the Bureau Service Portal.

Unlike the Bureau Service Portal, the SDCS Cloud is an internet-facing service that does not require an N3 or HSCN connection, making it easier for providers to submit data and therefore enabling better coverage in published statistics. This new service stores MSDS data in cloud-based infrastructure.

Detailed guidance is available to support providers in making submissions via the SDCS Cloud. This includes detailed technical and user guidance. New providers must complete a defined process to gain access to the SDCS Cloud. It also uses two-factor authentication as the secure method of confirming user identity using a combination of two different factors.

The data is validated at the point of submission, for each provider. If file-level validation checks are not passed the provider will receive a file-level rejection report. If file-level validation is passed, the data are successfully submitted but the provider will still receive a report containing details of field-level errors and warnings. These can be investigated, corrected and further submissions can be made within the submission window.

From May 2023 NHS England has moved to a provisional and final processing submission models for the MSDS.  This change means that NHS England now processes data submissions at 2 points during the existing 2-month reporting window. Submissions made in the first month of the reporting window will be processed as the provisional submission of the respective reporting period and will produce provisional statistics. At the end of the second month NHS England will continue to run final processing on data submissions to produce final national analysis and final published statistics, this has not changed. The latest MSDS v2.0 submission dates are available on the SDCS Cloud webpage linked to above.

From April 2019 data, the MSDS data have been processed using NHS Digital’s Data Processing Services (DPS). DPS use modern technologies and processes to collect, process and access data more efficiently.

Patient Identifiers

Mothers and babies were uniquely and safely identified in MSDSv1.5 using the pseudonymised data items, MSDS_ID_Mother and MSDS_ID_Baby. These items are derived from a combination of identifiable data items, such NHS number, date of birth, postcode and gender to search a patient index and apply an existing ID to matching patients already present in the index or allocate a new ID for new patients. The index is common to both MSDS and the Community Services Dataset (CSDS), allowing linkage to track patients accessing both services.

MSDSv2.0 uses the Master Person Service (MPS), to allocate similar pseudonymised items, PERSON_ID_Mother and PERSON_ID_Baby. The MPS is an enhanced patient-matching algorithm that increases the number of linkable records where incomplete records have been submitted. It is intended that MPS is to be commonly used across a large number of datasets, facilitating simpler data linkage.

The two methodologies are not compatible, however the new PERSON_IDs created by the MPS will be retrospectively applied to MSDSv1.5 data, making it possible to track mothers who have babies over the lifespan of both datasets.

Unique Pregnancy ID

Unique Pregnancy ID is used to identify events such as antenatal bookings, screening tests, births and clinical interventions across a single pregnancy. In MSDSv1.5, this field (called UniquePregID) was derived using a combination of MSDS_ID_Mother and Estimated Date of Delivery.

In MSDSv2.0, the equivalent field (called UniqPregID) is created differently. In the newer dataset, providers are able to submit their own values (in the field PregnancyID) and these are also used in the derivation.

In common with patient identifiers, these are not compatible across the two datasets, but the new version of the field will again be retrospectively applied to the previous dataset enabling events to be linked for pregnancies that begin in MSDSv1.5 and conclude in MSDSv2.0.

These statistics are disseminated via the NHS England website.

The format of the monthly maternity publication based on MSDSv2.0 has changed from earlier publications in that we have moved to an HTML based publication format following Government Digital Service/UK Statistics Authority recommendations about making our data more accessible and user friendly to readers.

The new format is less reliant on downloading and opening attachments, allowing the data to be accessed directly on screen. This allows for more interactive content to be displayed.

The data used in this publication is available in a CSV to comply with Open Government Licence standard on Open Data.

These statistics are now classified as official and more detail about this can be found in the Data Quality Statement. More information about official statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website.

The Maternity Analysis Team welcomes any comments or feedback on the publication.