Maternity services project report

Healthwatch Rochdale went out for public consultation to give Rochdale residents and professionals an opportunity to vote for the areas of health and social care they wanted us to work in for 2017/18, and Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust (PAHT) was one of the top four areas chosen. Following on from the public consultation Healthwatch Rochdale reviewed the feedback received over the previous twelve months regarding PAHT, and a trend was found demonstrating that a proportion of patients were having negative experiences with maternity services which related to issues of quality of care and access to services. Healthwatch Rochdale therefore decided to investigate people’s experiences of maternity care in local hospitals further.

This study is based on analysis of 240 female participants responses. People were asked their views about a range of experiences related to maternity services they might have had at hospitals serving the Rochdale area. The analysis will focus on the three-way findings from Royal Oldham Hospital, North Manchester Hospital, and ‘Other’ local hospitals. In order to help with equalities monitoring, there is also a comparison of whether the responses of people self-identifying as BAME (British. Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) differ in any significant way from the overall responses.

The findings suggested there were differences between the overall and BAME responses, however these were quite specific to certain questions, or a hospital within a question. It did not appear that there was a general difference between overall responses and BAME responses.

Healthwatch Rochdale issued 7 recommendations and includes a response from the provider.