Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust has got themselves embroiled in a huge scandal over their maternity unit. It now seems that 100 deaths are under review.
Why does this concern me particularly?
The main reason is because there is only now stuff coming out questioning this.
You see in 2016 the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists published a report on regional variation on outcomes in childbirth based on information relating to 3rd / 4th degree tears and CS rates. This was based on data from 2013/14.
From this data it was glaringly obvious from the data that questions should have been raised.
Shrewsbury and Telford not only had one of the lowest CS rates:
Proportion of deliveries by caesarean section (ALL CS)
National average Primiparous deliveries: 22.1%
The Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust: 12.8%
But it also had one of the lowest levels of CS rates from induced labour:
Proportion of induced labours resulting in emergency caesarean section
National average Primiparous deliveries: 29.9%
The Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust: 15.1%
Annoyingly the site that had all this data has been taken down, so it can't be compared easily but its out there. (And I'm glad I took the time to make a note of this at the time).
Shrewsbury's rates were abnormally low against other Trusts. It immediately begged a simple key point;
Either they were doing something amazing that other hospitals should be following to improve their own outcomes
or
They were doing something VERY wrong
(It also raised the question of whether they had a population which was particularly low risk but there isn't really anything about the area in terms of demographics which makes it distinct from other areas, so its relatively easy to dismiss).
If this data was like this for a single year, it looks bad. If its part of a similar pattern, its worse.
Its the type of stat that you look at going WHY? What ARE they doing there.
And here we are:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6186371/Shrewsbury-baby-scandal-covers-100-deaths-Probe-NHS-trust-grows.html
And the following lines immediately jump out at me.
Yet a number of families insist their babies died needlessly because midwives missed treatable infections or complications.
Other women claim they were forced to have natural labours without the use of caesareans or forceps.
Telford CCG has also recently introduced a blanket ban on maternal request CS against NICE guidance. The CCG are a separate body to the Trust, but my question here in the context of things going on, is to ask whether the CCG introduced this after a steep rise in requests in the area - following traumic births or women hearing particularly troubling stories?
This stinks to high heaven, and I hope that if there are any lurking journalists out there, they look into this angle. If this pans out to show that there really is a scandal like Morecombe here, then there seems to be a case to answer by BigWigs higher up the NHS food chain. Did they ignore stats that jump out, shout and do a little dance whilst they invite some attention.
I really hope this inquiry does not turn out the way I fear it is.
I know this message perhaps should be in another section, and maybe its just shouting into the abyss. But it is relevant to feminism and frankly I'm sick to death of maternity services being one of the sections of the NHS which is most neglected in terms of political interest, in part because women have been so conditioned into accepting sub standard care and new mothers being one of the groups least able to advocate/raise a complaint at the time.
I am maybe just hoping that a lurking journalist bumps into this one, and keeps an eye on it, cos if this does turn out to be another Morecambe, the story isn't about individual midwives and managers.
It would seriously suggest that this would be about something very much bigger, indicating a systematic failure to ask simple questions at the highest levels of the NHS. I want to make damn sure that there something out there posing those particular questions whilst hoping that these cases are properly reviewed.
I hope to god, I'm wrong about this and my spidey senses are just malfunctioning.