National Maternity and Perinatal Audit Clinical Report 2021

Reports | Published: 14 Oct 2021

The National Maternity and Perinatal Audit (NMPA), which measures a care and outcomes and provides this data to maternity providers to facilitate quality improvement, has published its third report.

Based on data between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2018, the report presents measures of maternity and neonatal care based on 304,518 births in English, Welsh and Scottish NHS services. Key clinical findings, when comparing this data to the 2015/16 NMPA clinical report, include:

  • The proportion of newborns born small for gestational age at term has declined in Scotland and Wales year-on-year (from 53.8% to 49% in Scotland, and from 62.2% to 57.7% in Wales)
  • The proportion of babies born in Scotland and Wales with 5 minute Apgar score of less than 7 has increased (from 1.3% to 1.53% in Scotland, and from 1.1% to 1.24% in Wales), and
  • The proportion of women in Scotland and Wales who experience induction of labour at term has increased (from 32.2% to 35.1% in Scotland, and from 32.1% to 34.1% in Wales).

This is the first report based on centralised maternity from all three countries. However, there is variation between and within the three countries in the availability, quality and completeness of the data items used to generate the maternal and neonatal measures. As such, this report also contains a number of key findings in relation to data quality.

Read the full report: You can read the report by clicking on the link below.

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National Maternity and Perinatal Audit Clinical Report 2021