Improving Outcomes for Preterm Babies
The HI NENC Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme (SIP) has significantly improved the outcomes for babies born earlier than 34 weeks gestation, due to the highly effective collaboration and best practice sharing between all mat/neo organisations in the North East North Cumbria region.
An effective way to improve the outcome of pre-term birth is to ensure the mother and baby receive a number of evidenced based interventions given before, during and after birth.
 | Babies born in the appropriate care setting: NENC has been one of the highest performing regions in the UK for this in recent years, achieving over 90% compliance. |
| This achievement has been maintained during 2023/24. |
| NENC has supported the implementation of seven interventions which improve the outcomes for babies born preterm, and has made improvements across all of these. |
One of the aims of the National Maternity and Neonatal SIP is to contribute to the national ambition to reduce the national rate of preterm births from 8% to 6%.
This aim links to national priorities including Better Births, Safer Maternity Care, and the Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services.
The NENC MatNeoSIP has adopted a system-wide quality improvement approach to this, tapping into existing system level entities and their infrastructures, including, but not limited to, NENC Local Maternity and Neonatal System (LMNS), Northern Neonatal Network and the NENC Integrated Care System, plus the eight Trusts and ten Units which deliver maternity and neonatal services. This collaborative approach maximises both capacity and impact as well as reducing duplication.
NENC has focused on ensuring that preterm babies are born in the appropriate setting as this improves survival and neurodevelopmental outcomes. NENC has been one of the highest performing regions in the UK for this in recent years, achieving over 90% compliance. This achievement has been maintained in 2023/24.
For women, there has been emphasis on ensuring that they receive magnesium sulphate (which reduces the risk of cerebral palsy), intrapartum antibiotics (reducing the risk of Group B Streptococcus and sepsis), and antenatal corticosteroids (which reduces the risk of preterm lung disease, brain haemorrhage, necrotising enterocolitis [NEC] and sepsis). During 2023/4 NENC has made improvements in all three of these interventions.
For babies, attention has been on optimal cord management (which reduces the risk of brain haemorrhage as well as the need for blood transfusion), keeping babies at the optimal temperature (which reduces the risk of mortality and brain haemorrhage, NEC and sepsis) and maternal breast milk (to reduce the risk of sepsis and NEC). Again, improvements have been made in all these interventions during 2023/24.
NENC is proud of these achievements and plans to continue this work in 2024/25.