So ran the headline in the Guardian newspaper in September 2022 describing the latest findings of the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (‘CQC’).
In the annual report the CQC say “Action to ensure all women have access to safe, effective and truly personalised maternity care has not been sufficiently prioritised to reduce risk and help prevent future tragedies from occurring. In fact, our ratings as of 31 July 2022 show that the quality of maternity services is getting worse, with 6% of NHS services (9 out of 139) now rated as inadequate and 32% (45 services) rated as requires improvement. This means that the care in almost 2 out of every 5 maternity units is not good enough”.
This means there remains an unacceptably high risk that both the mother and the baby may suffer an injury.
The report goes on to say “The findings of recent reviews and reports … show the same concerns emerging again and again. The quality of staff training, poor working relationships between obstetric and midwifery teams, and a lack of robust risk assessment all continue to affect the safety of maternity services. These issues pose a barrier to good care, which is compounded when the voices of frontline staff and women using services are not listened to or acted on”.
Sadly, from our extensive experience of working for mothers and children who have suffered injuries as a result of clinical negligence, this reflect the fact that we see the same types of errors over and over again, which lead to successful claims for medical negligence.
Not everything that can go wrong in healthcare leads to a claim for clinical negligence. In fact, only a small percentage do so. However, if you, or a loved one are affected by clinical negligence then please do contact us for a no-obligation review. If we take your case on then we can offer a ‘no win, no fee’ funding arrangement.
https://www.cqc.org.uk/publication/state-care-202122/concern#maternity
