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NEWS: Susan Mayor A fifth of maternity services in England are inadequate, review says BMJ 2008; 336: 238-a-239-a [Full text]

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Improving Maternity Services?

Mark Selinger   (6 February 2008)

Improving Maternity Services? 6 February 2008
Mark Selinger, Consultant in Feto-maternal Medicine Royal Berkshire NHS Trust, RG1 5AN Send response to journal: Re: Improving Maternity Services?	Sir, For as long as I have been a Consultant (almost 20 years), maternity services have successfully configured themselves to minimise maternal and perinatal mortality rates (MMR and PNMR) in response to the Triennial Maternal Mortality reports and local PNM data now published under the wing of CEMACH. Hence we have what we have. Now the Health Care Commission (HCC) has moved the goal posts so we will have to reconfigure the services to satisfy their surrogate criteria. Unless the HCC include the previous data we may end up with a service that pleases the consumer but gives less of them the opportunity to go home alive with a live baby. Is that what we want? Mark Selinger DM, FRCOG Consultant in Feto-maternal Medicine Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Competing interests: None declared