Inquiry demands NHS maternity overhaul as Morecambe Bay hospital trust acknowledges ongoing pain families are going through
Morecambe Bay's health trust has acknowledged the ongoing pain that some families are going through following a national NHS maternity system inquiry.
The national inquiry has strongly criticised the NHS maternity system in England, saying it is "not set up to deliver consistently safe, high-quality and compassionate care".
Baroness Valerie Amos, who chaired the government-commissioned review, found "unacceptable racism and discrimination embedded within the system" and said that "as a country... we cannot continue like this".
She recommended eight changes to overhaul the system, including the appointment of a maternity commissioner with a "relentless focus" on improving care, reports the BBC.
Her independent findings come days after a review into maternity care in Nottingham found hundreds of women and babies had been harmed by poor care.
Baroness Amos and her team heard from more than 450 families and visited 12 NHS trusts to understand what change was needed.
The key failing they identified was an unwillingness to listen to women and families, leading to poor outcomes. There was a lack of a consistent standard of care, with large variations across the health service.
One of the immediate actions being urged on maternity units is to overhaul their triage service, which Baroness Amos described as "increasingly becoming the A&E service for maternity".
As part of that, midwives should be dedicated to answering calls and providing timely advice, while women should be offered a face-to-face appointment if they remain concerned. If these changes are made, the report says, "lives will be saved and harm reduced".
Meanwhile, racism and discrimination must be treated as a critical safety issue, the inquiry found, requiring urgent intervention including gathering granular data on unequal outcomes that is escalated to board level when patterns emerge.
Steve Williamson, Chief Executive, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We welcome the publication of the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, and want to thank Baroness Amos and her team for carrying out this important piece of work.
“As a Trust, we were keen to be involved in the investigation as it gave us the opportunity to share learning and examples of good practice from our improvement journey and highlight any further work we could do to strengthen our maternity services. “It’s important that we acknowledge the ongoing pain that some families are going through because of actions taken by this Trust in the past.
"While we have made significant changes and improvements in recent years, that does not lessen the impact on those involved, and we will never forget that.
“However, we are in a very different place now and our teams have given their all to make positive changes to the services we offer local families.
"These changes include establishing a new leadership team, strengthening governance and oversight, and embedding a culture focused on openness, learning and effective multidisciplinary working.
"We are listening more closely to families, investing in bereavement support and triage facilities, improving staffing levels, and taking targeted action to ensure more equitable care for all women and their babies.
“These improvements have been recognised by the CQC who recently rated our maternity services as ‘good’ for the first time since 2019.
"We were also ranked fourth nationally for overall positive scores in the recent CQC Maternity Survey with most survey questions showing either stability or improvement.
“These significant changes deserve to be celebrated but it isn’t the end. We know we have more to do and are absolutely committed to continuing to work with our teams, families, key partners and local communities to move forward.”