Wellbeing Maternity Ideas Portal

I am assuming everyone else got the email from the Digital Maternity Programme (copy below) with regards to yet another dataset standard/request (as if MDSD2 wasn't enough)? Looking through the 500 line plus data spec I have no idea how or even if we will be able to provide much of the data requested especially as they have set yet another tight deadline (April 2020) so I guess we will have to see what Euroking can do/provide in due course. I wonder if the @%&$'s requesting all this information have ANY consideration for the impact and amount of work this causes all of us (by my calculation it now takes TWICE as long to complete a record on E3 than it used to and a lot of the additional data collected has little or no use/impact on the woman/baby).

Better Births recommendations included the investment in electronic, interoperable maternity records, from which the data which is input once, can feed the information demands made of the service from Trusts, CCGs as well as provision of  data collected for secondary use purposes such as that contained in the Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS).

The NHS Digital Maternity Programme (workstream 7) have worked with the Professional Records Standards Body, (PRSB), to create a Maternity Record Standard, relating to direct patient care that, when adopted,  will ensure information is collected in a consistent way and enable data to flow between all maternity health care providers. This has the potential to transform information sharing for staff throughout the pregnancy pathway, improving the quality and safety of maternity care.

The Maternity Record Standard is different to the MSDS version 2 data standard as it focuses on information captured regarding the individual woman for the purposes of direct care (however it has been developed to compliment MSDS v2 and therefore reduce burden for services).

In September 2019 an Information Standards Notice (ISN) will be published to announce the new Maternity Record Standard (under the Health & Social Care Act 2012). It  will specify that the new standard must be implemented from April 1st 2020 and will include instructions informing service providers that the Maternity Record Standard needs to be adopted, a timeframe for doing this and additional guidance on the  implementation.

When a Health and Social Care organisation in England receives an ISN they must ensure that they and their contractors pay regard to the requirements within the ISN. NHS contract also expects system suppliers to comply with the requirements when published.

The law relating to ISN requires organisations to pay regard to requirements of the standard as this ensures consistency of the data that is being captured by those providing care, helps to reduce health inequalities and informs service planning across England by enabling consistent comparison of information being recorded. By meeting this standard, you will be supporting the ambitions of the government by making maternity care in England safer by 2025.

In preparation maternity services need to,

• Have the conversation with their current supplier, do they know the ISN is coming and are ISNs covered within the service contract?
• If not covered, how much is it going to cost to meet the standard?
• If your current supplier is unable to meet the maternity record standard start to consider what your alternative options are for meeting this safety standard?
• Continue to drive quality data capture throughout the pregnancy pathway as this will reduce burden for staff and support safer care going forward.

For more information regarding the programme visit our website or email the team at digitalmaternity@nhs.net