New CQC report raises concerns over our maternity units
Posted on 22nd September 2021
Our expert medical negligence solicitors discuss the new CQC report on maternity care, and the important concerns that it raises.
This week, a long anticipated report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has revealed that there are a number of hospitals across the UK who are struggling to implement necessary steps to ensure patient safety. Read on to learn more about the report’s findings and what this means for healthcare services.
CQC ‘Safety, equity and engagement in maternity services’ report:
The new report, published on Tuesday, was based on findings by the CQC between March and June of 2021, and it highlighted a number of continuing issues in the care provided by maternity services.
Concerns included:
Worries over teamwork in maternity staff:
a lack of consistent and clear leadership, management, governance and assurance processes. This included a lack of oversight of services and problems in them
poor working relationships between obstetric and midwifery teams
staff feeling unsupported or not feeling confident to seek support from senior colleagues
Problems with the reporting of incidents:
staff didn’t always recognise what constituted an incident or how to grade the incident correctly
staff did not have time to report incidents due to the amount of activity in their work area
some maternal deaths had not been reported via NRLS or investigated as serious incidents
staff made allegations of cover-ups when things went wrong and that incidents were often not reported
not being clear on when to involve consultants or lacking the confidence to liaise with colleagues to escalate concerns
What does this new CQC report mean?
This report has produced worrying findings into the working of maternity services in the UK. As a result of the concerns, the CQC have proposed a number of predicted actions to be taken, including increasing support of at-risk pregnant women.
These problems in maternity units in our hospitals are not new, with the CQC rating 50% of maternity units as either “requires improvement” or “inadequate” in 2018. After falling to 39% by March 2020, this number has risen again since to 41%, the new report states.
Morecambe Bay Trust and Lancaster Hospital placed into ‘special measures’:
These new findings come just weeks after Lancaster Hospital and others that are a part of the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust were placed into ‘special measures’.
The North-West Trust was responsible for a number of avoidable deaths of mothers and children in the years leading up to this. See more on this here.
What does medical negligence in maternity care lead to?
There are a large number of medical problems that can occur as a result of maternity medical negligence.
For a full overview of our birth injury negligence page, and to learn more about what constitutes medical negligence in this sense, see this here.
Contact our NO WIN NO FEE medical negligence solicitors today:
If you would like to discuss a potential medical negligence claim with our specialist solicitors, and believe that a doctor or medical professional has breached their duty of care in your treatment, do no hesitate to get in touch with us today here, or call us on 01772 783314 .
As maternity units and hospitals across the country struggle to make the necessary improvements in adequate time, there could be more avoidable injuries taking place every day because of the medical negligence of medical professionals. This should not be happening, and our medical negligence solicitors are here to help if you have experiences medical negligence of any kind.
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