A new service enables pregnant women and their families to see details of the quality of care provided by their local maternity services at a glance.

The launch of the Healthcare Commission’s maternity website today (Friday) follows the most comprehensive comparative review of maternity services ever carried out. The review, which published in January, found significant variations in the quality of care across the country. As part of the review, the Commission ranked 22% of maternity services as “fair performing” (32 NHS trusts) and 21% as “least well performing” (31 trusts).

Some 26% of trusts were “best performing (38 trusts) and 32% were “better performing” (47 trusts).

The new website enables users to get comprehensive information about their local maternity service. The new site allows people to easily search for and access information on each trust, and see how they scored on three key questions:

· Are practices in place to help ensure a high quality and effective maternity service?

· Are women informed, counselled and supported to ensure they have a positive maternity experience?

· Is there adequate staffing and facilities and are these used effectively?

The website also gives trusts’ maternity services a score out of five on 25 different areas, including how well each local trust provided recommended antenatal screening, on appropriate use of caesarean sections and on the quality of support they offered parents in caring for the baby after discharge.

People can search the website for their local trust by place name or postcode.

Sue Eardley, Maternity Services Project Lead at the Healthcare Commission, said: “Around 600,000 women give birth in England every year, and choosing where and how to give birth is an important decision. We know that patients want comparative information, and we are delighted to offer this new online guide to expectant mothers and their partners.

“We hope that parents will be able to use this information to improve their experience both before, during and after the baby is born. For example, if a trust scored relatively poorly in offering recommended screening, we hope women will use this information to discuss with their midwives which tests are available at their trust.

“It’s important for expectant mothers and their partners to know that if a trust is rated as “least well performing”, it does not mean that a service is unsafe. If we believed any unit to be unsafe, we would take immediate action to ensure mothers and babies were protected.”

The website can be found at:

www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/maternity.cfm

The Healthcare Commission is committed to publishing the results of its work in a way that is relevant and accessible to the public. In addition to maternity, it already offers similar websites for diabetes and heart surgery, and in future will also provide this for mental health services.