Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of births that take place (a) in obstetric maternity units, (b) in midwife-led units that are (i) freestanding and (ii) alongside an obstetric unit, (c) at home, and (d) in any other setting.
In October 2017 NHS Digital, for the first time, collected data relating to the setting in which babies are born. The following table shows the count of babies by place of birth for the Month of October.
Count of babies by Place of Birth type, Maternity Services Data Set (MSDS), October 2017 | ||||||||
Place of Birth | Count of babies | Proportion of babies | ||||||
Midwifery unit, co-located with consultant obstetric unit | 3,210 | 7.9% | ||||||
Midwifery unit, co-located with other non-obstetric consultant unit | 98 | 0.2% | ||||||
Midwifery unit, stand alone | 864 | 2.1% | ||||||
Midwifery unit, type not known | 1,339 | 3.3% | ||||||
At a domestic address | 724 | 1.8% | ||||||
GMP ward | 1 | 0.0% | ||||||
Consultant ward | 15,151 | 37.3% | ||||||
Consultant/GMP/midwife ward | 18,344 | 45.2% | ||||||
Private hospital | 1 | 0.0% | ||||||
Other hospital or institution | 16 | 0.0% | ||||||
Ward/unit without delivery facilities | 147 | 0.4% | ||||||
None of the above | 702 | 1.7% | ||||||
Total where known (All Submitters - 124 from 132 expected submitters) | 40,597 |
| ||||||
Not known | 621 | |||||||
Missing Value / Value outside reporting parameters | 5,165 |
Source: MSDS, NHS Digital.