Financial impact

Unsafe maternity care leads to a huge drain on financial resources; litigation costs were £700 per birth in the UK in 2012 (NHSLA 2012). This results in less money being available to provide care for women and their babies. The PROMPT programme has improved clinical outcomes in other units across the world, as well as the UK; these impacts have been associated with published reductions in litigation costs in the US, Australia and the UK;  the benefits to individuals and families not withstanding.

The introduction of PROMPT has led to:

PMF have also started to explore the value proposition of PROMPT, and training for intrapartum  emergencies more generally, using the improvements in brachial plexus injury (BPI) as a vehicle for investigation. In particular we aim to measure the impact of BPI on utilities and then Quality of Life Years for both individuals with BPI, and also their carers.  This will permit us to express the value and/or benefit of training in the same way that the National Institute of Care Excellence (NICE) uses for the benefits of other treatments.

This is part of an ambition for the PROMPT team to inform policy, as well as practice, to improve outcomes as widely as possible.