Developing a set of consensus indicators to support maternity service quality improvement: using Core Outcome Set methodology including a Delphi process

Abstract

Objective: To develop a core metric set to monitor the quality of maternity care. Design: Delphi process followed by a face-to-face consensus meeting. Setting: English maternity units. Population: Three representative expert panels: service designers, providers and users. Main outcome measures: Maternity care metrics judged important by participants. Methods: Participants were asked to complete a two-phase Delphi process, scoring metrics from existing local maternity dashboards. A consensus meeting discussed the results and re-scored the metrics. Results: In all, 125 distinct metrics across six domains were identified from existing dashboards. Following the consensus meeting, 14 metrics met the inclusion criteria for the final core set: smoking rate at booking; rate of birth without intervention; caesarean section delivery rate in Robson group 1 women; caesarean section delivery rate in Robson group 2 women; caesarean section delivery rate in Robson group 5 women; third- and fourth-degree tear rate among women delivering vaginally; rate of postpartum haemorrhage of ≥1500 ml; rate of successful vaginal birth after a single previous caesarean section; smoking rate at delivery; proportion of babies born at term with an Apgar score <7 at 5 minutes; proportion of babies born at term admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit; proportion of babies readmitted to hospital at <30 days of age; breastfeeding initiation rate; and breastfeeding rate at 6–8 weeks. Conclusions: Core outcome set methodology can be used to incorporate the views of key stakeholders in developing a core metric set to monitor the quality of care in maternity units, thus enabling improvement. Tweetable abstract: Achieving consensus on core metrics for monitoring the quality of maternity care.