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Publication - Research and analysis

Miscarriage Care and Facilities in Scotland: Scoping Report NHS Grampian

Published
29 November 2023
From
Director-General Education and Justice
Directorate
Children and Families Directorate
ISBN
9781835215234

This report details the findings of a scoping exercise to better understand miscarriage care in Scotland within this Health Board. The individual Health Board reports and the national report seek to aid policy makers and Health Boards in making decisions about improvements to Miscarriage Care

View supporting documents Supporting documents

Data on miscarriages

Accurate assessment of the number of all miscarriages that occur in Scotland is not possible at present as only miscarriages that require hospital inpatient or day case treatment are recorded.

The Lancet series on Miscarriage Care recommended that:

  • miscarriage data are gathered and reported to facilitate comparison of rates among countries, to accelerate research, and to improve patient care and policy development; and
  • every country reports annual aggregate miscarriage data, similarly to the reporting of stillbirth.

The Scottish Government is currently working with Public Health Scotland to find ways to improve miscarriage data recording and to gather a more accurate picture of the number of miscarriages in Scotland. This will be used to facilitate comparison of rates among countries, to accelerate research, and to improve patient care and policy development.

This scoping exercise found that miscarriage data is not collected in all sites or in all Health Boards in Scotland. While some data is collected in 11 of the 14 Health Boards, there is variation in what is being recorded as a miscarriage and this varies both across and within Health Boards.

Information technology used to collect miscarriage data

Across Scotland different IT systems are used by Health Boards to collect data about those accessing miscarriage care. BadgerNet Maternity is used by 11 out of 14 Health Boards to collect miscarriage data and Trakcare is used by 8 Health Boards to capture miscarriage data.

In NHS Grampian data is collected via BadgerNet, Trakcare, and the local Health Intelligence team. All sites in NHS Grampian stated that they do not collect any data on the characteristics of women who experience a miscarriage (Table 24). In NHS Grampian, all reported miscarriages are recorded as a miscarriage, including if women report a biochemical loss or self-report previous miscarriages at a later time. At Peterhead Community Hospital and Inverurie Health & Care Hub this data is presented to the risk team.

Table 24: Data collected on miscarriage in NHS Grampian
Site BadgerNet Maternity Trakcare Other Number of miscarriages Miscarriages as proportion of pregnancies Gestation Maternal Age Parity SIMD Ethnicity
Aberdeen Maternity Hospital Yes No No No No No No No No
Dr. Gray’s Hospital Yes Yes No No No No No No No
Fraserburgh Hospital Yes Yes No No No No No No No
Peterhead Community Hospital Yes No No No No No No No No
Jubilee Hospital Yes Yes No No No No No No No
Inverurie Health & Care Hub Yes No No No No No No No No

Contact

Email: socialresearch@gov.scot

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