Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 15 December 2014 to Question 217335, how many patient safety incidents involving multiple pregnancies there were in each (a) hospital trust and (b) region in each of the last 10 years.

Table 1 and Table 2 illustrate the number of incidents reported to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) where the incident report contained keywords indicating multiple pregnancies. It is important to note that the inclusion of these keywords may not always indicate the incident directly affected a multiple pregnancy; for example, reference in the incident report may be made to previous pregnancies. The harm reported may relate to the mother or to one or more foetuses/infants. The table is attached.

Information on the specific causes for the maternity incidents outlined in Question 217335 is not held centrally as these are only available after local investigation. The NRLS collects incident reports from maternity services through upload from local reporting systems. The majority of learning and action on the causes of patient safety incidents is undertaken within trusts. NHS England reviews all reports of death and severe harm made to the NRLS and where specific remediable causes are identified NHS England issues advice through the National Patient Safety Alerting System.

Increasing numbers of reported patient safety incidents are considered to be a sign of an improving patient safety culture and increases in the number of incident reports should not be interpreted as deterioration in the safety of patients.

As organisations change considerably across time this data reflects NHS organisational structures as of 31 December 2014. This means that incidents reported before that date may have taken place in a site that was not associated with a given trust at that time.

NHS England has a wide programme of work in partnership with other organisations seeking to improve outcomes for mothers and babies, including reducing stillbirth and neonatal death and avoidable admissions to neonatal care.