Southport Hospital handed £50k to research better maternity services

16th March 2017

Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust has been awarded £50,000 by NHS England to explore innovative ways to use women’s and their partners’ feedback to improve maternity services.
A judging panel from NHS England and the Department of Health selected the Trust as one of three winners from almost 50 applications for support from the Maternity Challenge Fund, which was set up last year to encourage new approaches to using feedback to drive improvement in the experiences of women and their families while they are receiving maternity care.
Trusts were invited to apply for funding set up to support further advances in this area, linked to the overarching ambitions of Better Births.

As well as Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, other winning trusts are Gloucester Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Ted Adams, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, said: “Many large organisations use customer feedback to improve what they do and we’re no different. We want to use modern ways of asking our patients what they think about our care so that we can speed up our response to our patients. We must also support our staff to use the feedback they receive positively.”

Kath Evans, NHS England’s Maternity Experience of Care Lead, said: “This year’s Maternity Challenge Fund projects provide a real opportunity to explore how we can get even more value from the feedback that women and their partners give. These initiatives will explore whether, and how well, information about their experiences can be used to enhance what happens at an individual level.