Julie Tindale, National Clinical lead for Midwifery, NHS Connecting for Health responds to the publication of Delivering High Quality Midwifery Care.

Susan Hamer, Director of Nursing and Julie Tindale, National Clinical Lead for Midwifery at NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) have welcomed the publication of the report from the Quality of Midwifery Care Project Steering Group.

The opportunities laid out in Maternity Matters: choice, access and continuity of care in a safe service 2007 and the challenges posed to midwives in the High Quality Care for all: Next Stage Review 2008 are explored and explained through the report.

Within the report the vital importance of harnessing the benefits of specific maternity care informatics is noted. Expressly, that tools plus knowledge and skills when used with technology to provide information and gather evidence can support optimal maternity care. This report summarises the direction the profession must take for a world class midwifery service, using 21st Century methods that support midwifery education, practice and performance.

Report highlights

Delivering High Quality Midwifery Care highlights the importance of the maternity care pathway which monitored locally and nationally will shape the quality framework across the care settings. The report describes how midwives are to be educated and prepared for their role and their continuing professional development to meet future needs.

Midwives understand they must use evidence to prove their care is of the safest and highest quality. The report uses examples of tools such as Dashboards, Healthcare Resource Groups (HRG) and the reported experiences of women using midwifery services.  The Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) payment framework lays out a process that requires needs analysis and benchmarked evaluated specific goals for maternity care.

Helping midwives to deliver quality care

Electronically derived information and supported knowledge efficiently streamlines this process, freeing midwives time to provide care. The clinical leaders at NHS Connecting for Health are experienced at applying the tools of information technology or informatics to clinical disciplines and are centrally placed to assist and drive this agenda forward. Working in collaboration with policy makers, we are engaged with maternity care and newborn stakeholders and professional bodies.

The National Clinical Lead for Midwifery at NHS CFH is advising on the design and structure for a model of integrated maternity care called the Maternity Logical Record Architecture.

The NHS CFH Clinical team includes experts working to achieve authoritative clinical content assurance to provide a level of information governance that is essential to ensure system design is safe, needed and accurate. Any system must also support the published RCOG Standards for Maternity Care (PDF, 735Kb). This supports the national, regional and local agendas in achieving world class care that comply with professional standards.

The NHS must achieve effective healthcare IT services. For a truly world class service, it is essential that safe, secure, accurate health care records are available; furthermore that data collected provides the evidence for future commissioning, design and implementation of quality care.

Julie Tindale
National Clinical lead for Midwifery, NHS Connecting for Health