Maternity Triage Celebrate a year of improved care

If you have an emergency or concern during or after pregnancy, you can attend Maternity Triage for an urgent assessment. This week our Maternity Triage team took time out to celebrate a successful first year of implementation of the ‘Birmingham Symptom-Specific Obstetric Triage System (BSOTS).

 

The Birmingham Symptom-specific Obstetric Triage System is a standardized system developed in Birmingham, UK, to help midwives, obstetricians, and doctors prioritize care for women presenting with unexpected pregnancy-related concerns, ensuring they are assessed and treated based on clinical urgency rather than order of arrival.

 

When the Care Quality Commission inspected our maternity services, they made recommendations to improve the way that people who use the service are triaged. Responding to this, the team worked hard to implement a new system to ensure that everyone is initially assessed within 15 minutes before being categorised based on their clinical need rather than arrival time.

 

The new process was launched in April 2024. Since then over 6,400 service users have gone through the new process, an average of nearly 600 people per month. Impressively, 89% of patients have indeed received their initial assessment within 15 minutes and 87% have been seen within the target time linked to their clinical needs.

 

The team came together to mark this milestone which is one of the reasons our maternity services are now ranked 3rd in London for service user satisfaction, according to the latest CQC maternity service.

 

In a special treat they were joined by Ruby a Whittington baby who is now four years old!