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    NHS in England failing to record ethnicity of those who sue over maternity care
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    NHS in England failing to record ethnicity of those who sue over maternity care

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    6 Comments

    1. DRSandDuvetDays on

      I’m sure a lot of people will be along with smart comments but the care of black women in the maternity system is genuinely horrifying.

    3. Worldly_Table_5092 on

      Hmmm…. we could all wear a t-shirt or a bangle with our ethnicity so doctors can’t say they don’t know.

    4. Granite_Outcrop on

      The idea that *white* midwives and doctors are widely prejudiced against non-white mothers & their offspring is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

    5. Nights_Harvest on

      Ultimately having such data is better than not because of how we feel about this.

      Let’s assume that not every case is negligence, let’s not shit on NHS workers that worked hard through COVID, weren’t you clapping for them?

      If hospitals possessed this data it would ensure that NHS employees have instant access to as much information about the patient as possible.

      Also in CASE of FRAUD, there are certain statistics that could highlight it.

      We cannot keep making decisions based on how we feel about them, but as a logical problem.

    6. homelaberator on

      There seems to be some hole in this article. The complaint being made is that they aren’t collecting ethnicity data on who sues. It does not say whether ethnicity data is being collected on those who complain or those with “adverse outcomes”. It might be the case that all that sue have already used the internal NHS complaints process and so ethnicity data, more data, is available in a different form. It might be the case that extensive ethnicity data is taken for all outcomes.

      There is a question though, that ethnicity data for those who sue could shed light on, and that’s if certain ethnic groups are more likely to sue than others. From what we know about other areas, there are class, income, education, and ethnic dimensions to those that do sue.

      If legal action is a strong motivator for change within the health system, it might explain part of the racial/ethnic differences that exist if there is also an ethnic bias in those suing.

      Put another way, black mothers and babies have worse outcomes (this is undisputed) but it could be that they are also much less likely to sue (which we don’t know since this data isn’t collected), and if they are less likely to sue then there may be less incentive to fix the problems (seems like a reasonable supposition).