Shropshire baby deaths: Hospital trust is higher than average for stillbirths, report shows

Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SATH) is included in a list of trusts with a mortality rate that is 10 per cent higher than the average for that type of organisation.

SATH is currently the focus of a Health Secretary-ordered review of the way it investigated a series of baby deaths over the past few years.

The latest report, from MBRRACE-UK (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquires across the UK) lists hospitals with higher-than-expected perinatal mortality.

The report looks at perinatal deaths for births from January to December 2015, and uses a traffic light system to highlight those where action needs to be taken.

The authors of the report have called on SATH and other hospital trusts to investigate their procedures and policies in light of the findings.

Dr Brad Manktelow, associate professor at the University of Leicester, who led the statistical analysis, said: “Those trusts and health boards identified with high rates of stillbirth or neonatal death rates should review the quality of the care they provide.

“Work commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Programme is under way to develop a standardised perinatal mortality review tool to support and improve the quality of review of all stillbirths and neonatal deaths within all trusts and health boards in the future”.

Overall, researchers found that the rate of stillbirth in the UK reduced by eight per cent between 2013 to 2015.

In 2015, the stillbirth rate was 3.87 per 1,000 total births, a fall from 4.20 per 1,000 total births in 2013.

But the authors said that despite the fall, UK stillbirth rates still remain high compared with many similar European countries and there remains “significant variation” across Britain.

The neonatal death rate remained fairly static with a fall between 2013 and 2015 from 1.84 to 1.74 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Earlier this week the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ (RCOG) Each Baby Counts initiative published information that said failure to monitor babies’ heart rates is one of the reasons newborns are dying on hospital wards.

Hospitals ‘committed to learning lessons’

Staff at Shropshire's main hospitals will examine a report that concluded they had a higher than expected rate of stillbirth and neonatal deaths.

Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust (SATH) says it is committed to learning any lessons it can following the MBRRACE report into Perinatal Deaths.

Adam Gornall, clinical director for maternity at SATH said: “We welcome the publication of the third MBRRACE report into perinatal deaths and, as suggested by the MBRRACE team, we have already analysed the quality of the care that we provided for each of the babies born within our trust that feature within the report.

“We will examine the report in detail to see what further points of learning there may be for our trust."

Mr Gornall said a number of factors had affected the figures in the report.

He said: “Overall the figures within the report show that we have had a higher than expected perinatal death rate for the year 2015 for a unit of our size. On closer analysis of the figures we have noted a number of points that are important.

“In 2015 we recorded the lowest number of stillbirths ever within the trust. Clearly this is extremely important and we believe is testament to all of the changes in practice made over the past few years to improve the safety for all unborn babies. However we have also noted a higher than average number of babies that died in the neonatal period within the trust. Unusually six of the 14 babies that died within the neonatal period had a congenital abnormality which, sadly, they could not survive, which accounts for the higher than average figure.

“We have invited the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to review our current practice, we are conducting our own review and NHS Improvement are undertaking an independent review into the level of investigation in these and other previous cases. We look forward to welcoming these reports and are wholeheartedly committed to learning lessons from them.

“We are committed to providing the safest and kindest care to everyone who uses our services and are deeply sorry for any occasion when we have fallen short of the high standards we set in our care for local families.”