Shocking report reveals 10 most dangerous UK hospitals to give birth in – are you near one of them?
An alarming new report has named and shamed the hospitals in England with the highest number of preventable birth injuries.
Manchester University Foundation NHS Trust may be the most dangerous hospital to give birth in — paying compensation to more new mothers than any other medical institution in England over the past two years.
The hospital’s negligence was responsible for the harm suffered by the 33 women and their babies, according to independent reviewers.
Manchester was followed by Nottingham University Hospital, which has already faced one of the UK’s largest ever maternity reviews after hundreds of baby deaths and injuries between 2006 and 2023.
Meanwhile, Barts Health NHS Trust, which paid out to 27 families across a two year period, awarded the most amount of cash to patients — an astonishing £39.9 million between 2022 to 2024, the figures, collected by law firm Been Let Down, showed.
For context, the NHS paid out a total of £69.3billion — less than twice the above figure — for maternity and neonatal liabilities in 2022-2023.
The data, uncovered by Freedom of Information requests, revealed ‘unnecessary pain’ to new mums or their babies was the most common birth complication between 2022 and 2024.
But a ‘worrying number’ of claims were also traced back to delays in treatment, including failures to respond to ‘red flags’ like bleeding and an abnormally fast heart rate, the firm said.
Katie Fowler lost her daughter, Abigail Fowler Miller, at only two days old in January 2022, after the maternity unit wrongly assured her over the phone that it was fine for her to stay at home when she went into labour
Carla Duprey, solicitor at law firm, Been Let Down, said: ‘A lot of the issues are core problems within the NHS and are not able to be rectified easily.
‘Funding and staff recruitment are major issues.
‘However, as many have pointed out in the past, if the NHS developed a system to report and learn from incidents and claims on a regular basis, then I believe this would be a first step to improving the overall service.
‘There also needs to be more emphasis on listening to patient’s concerns.’
According to the FOI data, a total of 1,503 claims were made to NHS Trusts in England, with brain damage and celebral palsy among the most common.
All are typically considered by legal experts to be ‘avoidable’ injuries, and were judged by independent reviewers as worthy of compensation.
Manchester University Foundation Trust had the most claims related to ‘obstetrics of neonatology’ in the period analysed (33), with Nottingham University Hospital and Barts Health NHS Trust following with 28 and 27 respectively.
Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, meanwhile, logged 26 and 25 claims.
A CQC maternity care survey in 2023 found the Trust was also ‘below average’ when scored by patients in three specific areas including effective pain management during labour, concerns taken seriously and trust in staff.
Overall, the most common cause for complaint was unnecessary pain, with 99 claims made to NHS Trusts between 2022 to 2024.
This was followed by psychological damage (98 claims), stillborn (95 claims) and brain damage (93 claims).
Fatalities were recorded in 86 claims, while unnecessary operations accounted for 83 and cerebral palsy, 66.
Cerebral palsy can happen if a baby’s brain does not develop normally while they’re in the womb, or is damaged during or soon after birth.
‘Our concern is that poor maternity care is being normalised and incidents of serious harm are going underreported,’ the report said.
‘A worrying number of birth injury claims have been traced back to failed or delayed treatment, including the failure to respond to ‘red flags’.
Sarah and Tom Richford with their son Harry who died seven days after he was born in November 2017 at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate. East Kent Hospitals admitted failing to provide safe care for the mother and baby and was fined £733,000 in 2021. A 2022 probe into the trust revealed dozens of babies and mothers died or were injured during childbirth
‘These include an abnormally fast heartrate, low fetal heart rate, bleeding, reduced fetal movements, failure to progress in labour, gestational diabetes and a failure to recognise arising complications.’
But, the law firm noted that NHS Trust data should not be interpreted as a league table, given some larger trusts that provide more complex treatments may receive more claims than smaller organisations or those providing low risk care.
The birth injuries could also relate to incidents that occurred years before the claims were settled, given it take months and even years for families and the NHS resolution to reach an agreement.
The report’s publication, however, follows a litany of maternity failures including Shrewsbury and Telford and East Kent NHS Trusts, with a record number of services now failing to meet safety standards.
In September, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found two-thirds of services either ‘require improvement’ or are ‘inadequate’ for safety.
It comes as a damning report into the ‘postcode lottery’ of NHS maternity care last May ruled good care is ‘the exception rather than the rule’. A hugely-anticipated parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma found pregnant women are being treated like a ‘slab of meat’
Frontline midwives have previously warned working in the NHS is like playing a ‘warped game of Russian Roulette’, as there was a risk of harm or death at any time, partly due to ‘dangerously’ low staffing levels.
The Royal College of Midwives suggests staff shortages and lack of funding is making it harder for midwives to deliver better-quality services.
The RCM’s latest calculation is that England is short of 2,500 midwives.
Some 201 babies and nine mothers died needlessly during a two-decade spell at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.
In a landmark 250-page report, investigators who probed the failures cited an obsession with ‘normal births’.
Women were encouraged to have vaginal deliveries, often when a caesarean would have been a safer option, to keep surgery rates low.
A similar scandal at Morecambe Bay NHS trust also referenced the dangers of fixating on vaginal or ‘natural’ births.
The 2015 inquiry, which found 11 babies and one mother suffered avoidable deaths, ruled a group of midwives overzealously pursued natural childbirth and that ‘led at times to inappropriate and unsafe care’.
It also comes as another report into the ‘postcode lottery’ of NHS maternity care last May also ruled good care is ‘the exception rather than the rule’.
A hugely-anticipated parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma, which heard evidence from more than 1,300 women, found pregnant women are being treated like a ‘slab of meat’.
At the time, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins labelled testimonies heard in the report ‘harrowing’ and vowed to improve maternity care for ‘women throughout pregnancy, birth and the critical months that follow’.
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard also said the experiences outlined in the report ‘are simply not good enough’.
