The New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators are the result of collaboration between the Ministry of Health and maternity stakeholders, representing consumer, midwifery, obstetric, general practice, paediatric and anaesthetic perspectives. Building on previous work undertaken across Australasia, an expert working group has established a set of 12 maternity clinical indicators that are relevant to the New Zealand setting and can be measured using available data collections.
This third report presents data for 2011 using the same standardised definitions as in the previous two reports (2009 and 2010). This is also the third report using the standard primipara definition which allows the separate assessment of a group of women for whom interventions and outcomes should be similar. In addition to eight indicators for standard primiparae, there are three indicators for all women giving birth in hospital and one indicator covering all babies born in hospital.
This report provides an opportunity for district health boards (DHBs) and local maternity stakeholders to identify areas for further investigation at a local level as part of local maternity quality and safety programmes. A time series view of three years of indicators data as an interactive dataset accompanies this third report and enables analysis of local and national trends over time.
As in the previous reports, there is variation between DHBs and between individual secondary and tertiary facilities. This variation among a group of women who would be expected to have similar outcomes (standard primiparae) needs to be investigated. These findings should encourage further detailed investigation of data quality, as well as the clinical practice management reasons for these variations.
Following the publication of the 2011 report, the indicators will be sourced from the National Maternity Collection, which integrates different sources of maternity data. This will improve the quality and completeness of the data presented, and will enable additional indicators to be included, broadening the scope of this publication. The National Maternity Monitoring Group will advise the Ministry of Health on recommended changes to the indicators.