This is a report on NHS-funded maternity services in England for April 2019, using data submitted to the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS).

This is the first report from the new version of the data set, MSDSv2. The new data set is a significant change which adds support for new policy initiatives such as personalised and continuous care plans as well as increased flexibility through the introduction of new clinical coding. As this is a major change it is expected that data quality and coverage will reduce from the levels seen in previous publications whilst the collection becomes more established.

The data derived from SNOMED codes is still being developed, so data items such as BMI and smoking at booking for this month will be released in due course. Other items may not be available for some or all trusts due to the range of data submitted. System suppliers are at different stages of developing their new solution and delivering that to trusts. In some cases this has limited the aspects of data that could be submitted to NHS Digital.

These statistics are classified as experimental and should be used with caution. Experimental statistics are new official statistics undergoing evaluation. More information about experimental statistics can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website.