Nottingham University Hospitals bosses will face councillors to present their maternity improvement plan at the county’s health scrutiny committee.
Maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) are rated inadequate and have recently been reinspected by the healthcare watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
At Nottinghamshire County Council’s health scrutiny meeting on March 29, Rupert Egginton, Interim Chief Executive, and Sharon Wallis, Director of Maternity will present information relating to the trust’s maternity improvement plan.
Documents published ahead of the meeting state that there were three serious incidents a month from September to December 2021.
They said there is “no reduction in harm incidents seen as yet”, but there were assurances that incidents are now being correctly graded.
In January 2021, there were four serious incidents, three of which were reported to the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) which investigates stillbirths, early neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and potential severe brain injuries.
As part of the improvement plan, the trust states that four of the new consultants recruited in summer 2021 are now in post and a recruitment and retention specialist is also in place.
The documents add that senior midwives are getting leadership development training and the trust has “continued to increase the visibility of leaders”.
They said that every community midwife and support worker now has a laptop and mobile phone and that a 24/7 Maternity Advice Line has been launched.
The council’s health scrutiny committee has previously called for a public inquiry into maternity services at the trust, with the chair Councillor Sue Saddington (Con) writing to the health secretary that it was time for “the old guard to stand aside” to make way for new leadership at the trust.
It comes after the Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed that the number of families coming forward to be part of an external review into inadequate maternity services has more than quadrupled in two weeks.
The local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) review into ‘maternity incidents, complaints and concerns’ has seen the number of families who have come forward increase from 84 on 9 March, to 387 on 22 March.
