What is the workstream?
In 2016, Better Births (The National Maternity Review) set out ambitions for maternity services in England, to improve the quality and safety of maternity care, to deliver better outcomes for the women and their families. It recognised that these ambitions can only be delivered through locally led Maternity System Programme Board (LMNS), supported by the regional and national maternity teams.
The Perinatal workstream will be the mechanism through which Maternity and Neonatal services transformation will be delivered.
The workstream will focus on reducing inequalities, improving, experiences and outcomes for women, their babies and families .
The Perinatal Optimisation workstream is a sub group of the Norfolk and Waveney LMNS Programme Board and reports to the Safety and Quality Board.
The Perinatal Optimisation workstream will function as a forum for collaboration, quality improvement, and to manage performance and risk. This will be supported by discussion of issues with the aim of reaching consensus among the Participants from colleagues from the three acute trusts maternity services.
- The James Paget University Hospital
- The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital
- The Queen Elizabeth Hospital
What are the goals/key deliverables of the workstream?
The Perinatal Optimisation workstream goals and deliverables have been established based on the actions outlined in the ‘Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services’, published March 2023.
The three year plan clearly outlines actions for trusts, Integrated Care Boards (ICBS) AND NHSE to achieve, to improve safety and quality for maternity and neonatal services.
Goals
Within the three year plan the actions are groups into four themes, with set objectives for each theme.
- Theme 1 – Listening to and working with women and families with compassion
- Theme 2 – Growing, retaining and supporting our workforce
- Theme 3 – Developing and sustaining a culture of safety, learning and support
- Theme 4 – Standards and structures that underpin safer, more personalised and more equitable care
Deliverables
Over the next three years the Perinatal Optimisation workstream will work collaboratively with colleagues across the three acute trusts and the ICB to provide the following deliverables as outlined in the three year plan.
- Use data to compare outcomes to similar systems and understand any variation and identify where improvements need to be made.
- Aim to ensure that any Neonatal module specifications include standardised collection and extraction of neonatal national audit programme data and the neonatal critical care minimum data set.
- Implement version 3 of the Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle by March 2024 and adopt the national MEWS and NEWT-2 tools by March 2025.
- Keep best practice up to date through version 3 of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle and the MEWS and NEWTT-2 tools, as well as developing tools to improve the detection and response to suspected intrapartum fetal deterioration.
To achieve the goals and deliverables the Perinatal Optimisation workstream has been split in five categories, each category then has individual projects aiming to meet the deliverables set out in the three year plan.
- Support for parents – Perinatal Peer Reviews, Educational Videos, Access to wards for parents
- Optimisation – Peri Prem, Kaiser, Donor Early Breast Milk, Mat Neo SIP, NEWTT2, MEWS
- Pre Term Births – to be agreed – new project
- Data – ODN
- BaU – Neo Critical Care Review, GIRFT
For more details about each of these projects, please see the webpages linked below.