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NHS North West: Antenatal, Newborn and Child Health Screening Failsafe Assessment
The UK National Screening Committee (NSC) had mandated that all regional Antenatal, Newborn and Child Health Screening Teams undertake a failsafe assessment of screening services within regions. ESC was commissioned to conduct the failsafe assessments for the North West region.
ESC objectives were to;
- Provide expertise and additional operational capacity to deliver the UK NSC required failsafe assessment.
- Deliver high quality reporting to improve screening services across the North West region.
What ESC did
- Completed the specified failsafe assessments for the antenatal and newborn screening pathways for 23 North West maternity service providers. This involved site visits, telephone interviews and email data collection.
- Data collected from non-clinical and clinical pathways: midwifery, obstetrics, paediatrics, ultrasonography and local/regional laboratory services.
- Assessed practices and policy against UK NSC standards and presented complex and sometimes contentious findings in provider reports.
Impact
- Provider reports identified non-compliant protocols, areas for improvement and also, best practice which was subsequently shared in an overall regional report.
- Audit identified three organisations with non-compliant protocols initiating incident and recall steps.