Improvements recommended for local maternity services

Healthwatch Rochdale

A report with seven recommendations for improvement based on patient’s experience using local hospital maternity services has been published.

Healthwatch Rochdale spoke to 242 females who predominately gave birth in either Royal Oldham Hospital or North Manchester Hospital within the last two years. Patients explored issues such as patient choice, care, staffing and cleanliness and had praise for midwives and staff who they felt were doing a good job but spoke of concerns over a lack of beds and staff availability.

To help with equalities monitoring a comparison between BAME respondents and overall respondents was made and there did not appear to be a significant difference, however, a slight variation was found with BAME patients from Royal Oldham Hospital less likely to say they received a choice of where to give birth.

Recommendations to help improve patients experience were made regarding patient choice, equality and diversity, information and guidance, waiting times, staffing levels and cleanliness.

Northern Care Alliance, which runs the Royal Oldham Hospital, has developed an action plan in response to the report findings.

The action plan includes a full review to be undertaken regarding what information is given to patients, when and by who, a review of processes relating to discharge, induction of labour and caesarean section pathways as well as a review of how feedback is gathered from patients to enable concerns to be raised more easily.

Kate Jones, CEO of Healthwatch Rochdale, said: “The findings in the report demonstrate that most local new mums have had a good experience with maternity services however there is still room for improvement especially around areas of equality and diversity.”