This statistical release makes available the most recent monthly data on NHS-funded maternity services in England, using data submitted to the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS).
This is the latest report from the newest version of the data set, MSDS.v.2, which has been in place since April 2019. The new data set was a significant change which added support for key policy initiatives such as continuity of carer, as well as increased flexibility through the introduction of new clinical coding. This was a major change, so data quality and coverage has initially reduced from the levels seen in earlier publications. We expect the completeness to improve over time as occurred with the previous version of the MSDS, and are looking at ways of supporting improvements.
This month three new measures have been included in this publication for the first time: the proportion of women placed under the care of a Family Nurse Partnership, the proportion of women recorded as not smoking during pregnancy as measured at booking and 36 weeks gestation, and the proportion of women with cephalic presentation who went on to have a spontaneous birth. Two measures were new in the publication last month: the proportion of women booking onto maternity services who have a valid London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy score recorded, and the proportion of women who meet the criteria to be recommended aspirin during pregnancy. Most of these new measures are included in the new 'Pregnancy' grouping. This new data can be found in the Measures file available for download and further information on these new measures can be found in the accompanying Metadata file.
The data derived from SNOMED codes is being used in some measures such as those for smoking at booking and birth weight, and others will follow in later publications. SNOMED data is also included in some of the published Clinical Quality Improvement Metrics (CQIMs), where rules have been applied to ensure measure rates are calculated only where data quality is high enough. 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.
To help Trusts understand to what extent they met the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST) Data Quality Criteria for Safety Action 2, we previously produced data files during the scheme months which contained information for data providers showing their performance against all MSDS-derived Safety Action 2 criteria. We are reviewing how similar data quality information may be more regularly included in publications in the future.
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.
Please note that the percentages presented in this report are based on rounded figures and therefore may not total to 100%.
Administrative Sources
Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS): this is a patient-level data set that captures information about activity carried out by Maternity Services relating to a mother and baby(s), from the point of the first booking appointment until mother and baby(s) are discharged from maternity services. This is a secondary uses data set, which re-uses clinical and operational data for purposes other than direct patient care.
