Maternity care in England is so inadequate that cases of women receiving poor care and suffering injuries during childbirth risk becoming “normalised”, the NHS regulator has said.
A report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) based on inspections of 131 maternity units has found a range of problems, adding to a sense of crisis in an NHS service that cares for 600,000 women giving birth and having their babies each year.
The watchdog’s dire findings came after Health Secretary Wes Streeting admitted he was deeply concerned about “the risk of a disaster facing women giving birth tomorrow”.
In its report, the CQC states that problems in maternity care are so deep-rooted that:
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Some women are frustrated by long wait times at triage and discharge themselves before being seen.
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In 65% of hospitals it is not safe to give birth, in 47% of hospitals safety needs to be improved and in another 18% safety is insufficient.
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Some hospitals do not record incidents that resulted in serious harm.
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There is a severe shortage of personnel and in some places a lack of potentially life-saving equipment.
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Hospitals do not always take into account the suffering that women experience as a result of poor care.
Nicola Wise, director of secondary and specialist care at the CQC, said: “We cannot allow shortages to be tolerated that would not be tolerated in other services.”
She said it is vital that the NHS ensures “that poor care and avoidable harm do not become normal, and that staff are supported to deliver the high-quality care they want to provide to mothers and babies, today and in the future”.
Streeting stressed the seriousness of what he called the maternity care crisis at a meeting on Wednesday to launch a report by the think tank IPPR on improving health in the UK.
“When it comes to the crisis in our maternity services across the country, it is one of the biggest issues that keeps me awake at night, because I worry about the quality of care that is being delivered today (and) the risk that women who are in labour tomorrow will be hit by a disaster,” he said. “I think what we have seen, in the case of specific trusts, are issues and risk factors that are common across maternity services across the country.”
He also said that the dire state of public finances inherited by the Labour government meant it could not provide free school meals to every primary school child in England. Last week, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the National Education Union encouraged ministers to take that step to reduce the number of children who do not have enough to eat and the increasing number of overweight people.
Streeting stressed Labour’s determination to tackle the UK’s status as “the sick man of Europe” through concerted action on public health.
“I think we’re in this terrible situation where we’re living longer but getting sick earlier. That’s terrible for quality of life, it’s also terrible for the country, for the labour market and for the financial sustainability of our health and care services,” he said.
However, he added that despite Labour’s plans to reduce the burden of deadly diseases, he would not become the “fun police” and police what people ate and drank.
In better news for the NHS, it has won praise from the Commonwealth Fund, a US-based think tank for global health. Despite its problems, it was rated the third best system out of 10 it analysed, largely because it provides universal and free care when it is needed.
“The NHS may be in big trouble from a British perspective at the moment, but that’s all relative. The US is worse on almost every front,” said report co-author Reginald Williams II. “While waiting lists may be a problem and services need improving, the cost of healthcare is not so high that it is bankrupting people (as it is in the US).”