Catchment area

[zaja]

Hi all,
I've just found out I'm pregnant and I'm looking into hospitals. My preferred one is Chelsea and Westminster but it's outside my catchment area. This is not a problem for me in terms of travelling but my question is does being outside a hospital's catchment area affects you in any way? I read in another post that someone was saying that C&W wasn't offering midwives' visits after birth to anyone outside their catchment area. Would this mean having to register at St Thomas after birth or how would this work?

I gave birth at St Thomas but because it’s not my local hospital, the postnatal visits were by midwives from my local hospital. This was done automatically (midwives at st Thomas’ sorted it all out for me).

I'm giving birth in a hospital outside my catchment - they've said once I discharge from hospital after having the baby they will send out community midwives from my local midwife team to see me / attend appointments at my local clinic

You can choose to have your child in any hospital in the country you want to. Your community midwife will be from your medical centre/ catchment area

Thanks so much for all your answers. They really help me to understand the situation!

I gave birth in a hospital 50 miles from where I was living at the time. I was meant to be moving locally so had all my antenatal care there expecting to live there by the time I was full term, but that all went to shit (long story) but the hospital is excellent and the one that was local to me is notoriously awful in terms of maternity and postnatal care. We ended up driving down in the middle of the night when I was in labour so thankfully the roads were nice and quiet- had it been rush hour with a closed Dartford bridge I’d have been absolutely buggered!

I wasn’t the only one either- there was a woman travelling down from Scotland to give birth in this hospital! (In Kent).

We still had visits from a local HV once we were back home, the hospital just contacted my GP surgery to let them know we’d been discharged.