RCOG: Healthcare Commission review 'useful tool'

Friday, 25, Jan 2008 12:00

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has described the Healthcare Commission's investigation into maternity services "a useful reference tool" to help improve services to pregnant women.

The Healthcare Commission review found significant variations in standards of maternity care across England, with performance judged to be strongest in the north and weakest in London.

The RCOG described the report as "is a useful reference tool for maternity teams to improve their services to pregnant women".

A statement read: "[The report] offers to the public a benchmark to compare the quality of services in individual trusts both nationally and locally, providing a gauge of the type of services offered, outcome measures and patient experience and satisfaction.

"It is also designed to identify if maternity services are being managed effectively and efficiently."

However, the RCOG underlined that although some trusts were labeled as fair or less well performing, it did not reflect unsafe services – but in some cases issues related to the availability and quality of data.

"In particular, London-based Trusts have performed badly in the review. There are reasons why this may be the case: lower staffing levels, higher concentration of ethnic minorities in some inner city or suburban areas," the RCOG said.

"The review results do not reflect these factors."

Some 60 per cent of NHS maternity services across the country were rated as best or better performing.

The college also hit out at the use of terms such as 'less well performing' – saying they could cause concern for patients.

"Such information is not helpful to anxious parents who maybe influenced by these figures when choosing where to deliver," the RCOG claimed.

"This could unbalance local services with prospective parents choosing to obtain maternity care from those units with more favourable assessments.

"Those units deemed to be best or better performing may be overwhelmed with subsequent difficulties with clinical capacity, staffing and training. Units rated as fair or least well performing could be destabilised through a reduced number of patients."