Express & Star

Russells Hall Hospital maternity failings: New Dudley health chief insists mothers are 'now in safe hands'

A Black Country hospital is safe for mothers to have their babies, its top boss has insisted following a damning report into maternity services - as she apologised to women who had received poor care.

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Expectant mothers should be assured action had been taken at Dudley's Russells Hall Hospital to address serious concerns over maternity care, trust chief executive Diane Wake said.

She was speaking following the release of a report which outlined a series of shocking failures within the maternity unit where 43 serious incidents were reported over a 20-month period, including the death of a baby and five incidents of avoidable harm.

An investigation was launched by NHS England due to the sheer scale of serious incidents reported between April 2014 and December 2015 - more than any other maternity unit in the West Midlands.

Failings flagged up included babies' heart rates being wrongly monitored, staff being slow to react to urgent situations and not recognising mothers' conditions deteriorating.

The hospital's own investigations into what was going wrong was 'inadequate', creating a risk of further harm to babies, the report by the Maternity Quality Improvement Board said.

Ms Wake, who joined the Dudley Group NHS Trust as chief executive after the period of concern, accepted it was a 'large number' of serious incidents - but insisted the maternity unit was now a different place to what it was two years ago following a rigorous staff training and improvement programme.

Extra midwives have also been recruited. So far this year there have been two serious incidents.

The chief executive was also adamant there was never a danger Russells Hall would lose its maternity services amid the crisis.

She told the Express & Star: "We should never be in a position where someone else externally is telling us there might be something wrong with services.

"But I now feel confident if there is anything wrong we have the right processes and systems to tell us early."

Asked what went wrong, she said: "I wouldn't say things were failing. We reported far too many incidents.

"We could have been more robust and timely reporting incidents and taking on board and making changes.

"It's about having the systems in place and I feel confident we do have the systems in place."

She added: "It's really difficult to comment on what went on before, we are trying to look forward.

"Serious incidents in the proceeding years have continued to go down. It's difficult to know why we got into that situation."

Chief executive Diane Wake

Ms Wake suggested some of the 43 serious incidents did not need to be reported as the hospital was still working on outdated guidelines at the time, so were 'making ourselves stand out'.

She said: "A lot of incidents related to that, if a baby goes to neonatal it would be a serious incident.

"Is it a serious incident if a baby goes home well? I would not necessarily say so but it is not a good experience for mums to go through."

The chief executive said the death of a baby boy among the 43 incidents should not have happened, as she apologised to all families affected.

She said: "Obviously we were very saddened by that and we offer our condolences to the family. We have been in touch with the family.

"We don't want that to happen in our hospital.

"We are always going to have things go wrong but we want to know what went wrong and what can be done differently."

She added: "What mothers expect is to come in, have their baby and take that baby home. I'm sorry they didn't get the experience in this hospital they deserved.

"But on a positive note, of the 43 cases a lot have come back and had other babies in this organisation. I think we have re-instilled the confidence our services are safe."

Ms Wake said the maternity unit had been 'battered' by the long-running investigation and that she was now keen to look to the future while ensuring services were fit for purpose.

She insisted mothers should be confident they will be in safe hands at Russells Hall.

She said: "(Baby) mortality rates are well below the national average. We have got some fantastic feedback from mothers who have had babies here.

"The number of serious incidents reported this year is two, it was eight the previous year. That demonstrates we have got a safe service here."