8. Data

The majority of trusts identified data as a key enabler for improving quality of maternity services and addressing inequalities. Monitoring data within services highlights where improvements are required and enables trust leaders to prioritise action and target interventions. Data enables an understanding of population needs, helping both maternity staff and trust boards.

Many trusts have undergone a process of data analysis to review the links between maternal and neonatal outcomes and deprivation and ethnicity in order to understand inequalities. A smaller number of trusts have developed data dashboards to identify women at higher risk, which enables maternity services to provide early support and interventions. One trust has developed an inequalities flag within their data dashboard, which has improved care for the most vulnerable women.

However, trust leaders raised concerns around data quality and reporting. For example, ethnic categories are often considered too broad to provide meaningful breakdowns of population groups. There are also issues related to ethnicity data recording that is often completed as ‘not known’, due to patient mistrust and lack of staff confidence in collecting data. One trust has employed a dedicated data analyst within their maternity service to focus on improving the quality of its data. It was recognised that improving data quality requires specific expertise, time and resource, alongside improved data sharing between NHS organisations and teams.

Providing data is the first half of the solution, with the second representing necessary actions trust leaders and clinicians take off the back of data analysis and interpretation – true success rests on data reporting being embedded within senior level decision-making processes.

Trust leaders highlighted that data can provide evidence of effective interventions for making improvements in maternity services. Yet there is limited national evidence of the impact of what is working to tackle inequalities, which can limit the extent to which boards can advocate for implementation of innovative interventions.

Call to action: Improve the recording and reporting of ethnicity data within maternity services by enabling data sharing through the Spine, enabling a single source of truth and sharing between primary and secondary care providers.

Call to action: Establish co-designed engagement programmes with women at high-risk to identify and address concerns in relation to data capture and recording. Programmes should include culturally sensitive training for staff, incorporating both communication and ethnicity capture, to foster open, respectful and inclusive interactions and support collection of ethnicity data recording.

Call to action: Enhance the national evidence base by funding research and evaluation programmes of improvement interventions within NHS trusts and foundation trusts, including embedding the learning from existing research (such as the work of the NIHR consortium addressing maternal inequalities).