This is a report on NHS-funded maternity services in England for November 2016, 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 an analysis of delivery method by previous births for women having a single baby at term (37 weeks gestation or more) in an interactive spreadsheet.
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.
Please note that changes to the construction of data quality measures mean that a small number of the validity percentages for one of the measures in the Data Quality report for historic months differ slightly from those shown in previously published Data Quality reports. Please see the note on the front page of the Data Quality report for further details.