Maternity units are a third more likely to turn away mums-to-be at weekends due to shortages, shocking report reveals
Local wards are 50 per cent higher to be shut over the summer holidays and Christmas
MATERNITY units are a third more likely to turn away women in labour at weekends, a damning report reveals.
And the chances of mums-to-be finding their local ward shut are 50 per cent higher over the summer holidays and Christmas.
Hospitals bosses will opt to close wards if there are too few to run services safely.
But investigators found numbers of births remained steady throughout the week and fell during weekends.
It suggests it is harder to get staff to work on Saturdays, Sundays and during holidays.
Freedom of Information requests reveal between 2011 and 2015, delivery wards were shut 2,268 times – meaning women were turned away an average of 567 times annually.
Closures lasted for an average of 16 hours forcing thousands to divert to hospitals miles away from their home.
Joyce Robins, from Patient Concern, said: “It is just extraordinary that people who deliver babies can refuse to work weekends or are not employed in sufficient numbers and no one will make them do it.
“It must be absolutely frightening for couples to be left in the lurch like this.
“Women don't have any choice about when they go into labour - they need a service that they can rely on.”
The report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies said closures were occurring despite the number of births remain static since 2010.
As well as staffing issues, researchers said hospitals were struggling to cope with growing numbers of older or obese mothers.
Fat women are 38 per cent more likely to spend four or more days in hospital when delivering, and a third more likely to need a c-section.
Study author Elaine Kelly, a Senior Research Economist at IFS, said: “NHS Maternity Units are more likely to close towards the end of the week and during holiday periods, pointing to staff availability as a key problem.” Almost 700,000 babies are born in England and Wales each year.
Experts said the NHS needs 3,500 more midwives.
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Jon Skewes, from the Royal College of Midwives, said: “There is a cocktail of a historically high birthrate, increasingly complex births and staff shortages that lead to units closing temporarily.
“Pressures on services are leading to closures of wards and also to the temporary removal of services such as home births.” He said more cash is needed to properly staff NHS maternity services.
The report comes just days after health service supremo Simon Stevens said women should be offered greater choice in childbirth.
An NHS England spokesman, said: “There is always a planned alternative when any individual ward stops taking extra women, something described as “closure” and, as the report makes clear, maternity units that follow this procedure have lower death rates.
"It is one of many ways in which the NHS has delivered year on year safety improvements in maternity care, despite the increase in the number of complex births, and is on track to halve stillbirths by 2030.”
A Department of Health Spokesperson said: “The NHS is one of the safest places in the world to give birth and as this report says, maternity closures are not common.
"However, we want maternity care to be even better, which is why we have 2,119 more midwives on our wards today than in 2010 and another 6,500 in training. The number of obstetrics and gynaecology consultants has also increased by 30 per cent."
