In December we reported that one in four women are transferred from midwife-led units to consultants because of complications when giving birth.
The story was based on Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to hospital trusts. 128 of 139 trusts responded.
The eventual story concentrated on the 2015-16 financial year, as that was the first full year since guidance from The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) became official (December 2014), stating midwife-led units were safest for low risk births. This was also the most complete data available, as in many cases hospitals could not provide data on the full five years requested.
Home birth figures in the FOI responses were not used because in some cases hospitals only had records for births completed at home and it was difficult to ascertain whether or not transfers from home were because of the need for intervention.
In addition to analysing data, we spoke to the Birth Trauma Association, The Royal College of Midwives (RCM), the head of midwifery at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, NHS England, and a number of women who had given birth in midwife-led units.
- A Google spreadsheet of the data obtained through FOI can be found here
- The same data is available in CSV format here
- Bar chart: Transfers from MLUs to consultant care
- Infographic: Midwife-led unit births
