Miscarriage Care and Facilities in Scotland: Scoping Report NHS Tayside

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.

For NHS Tayside data is collected via BadgerNet at all three sites and via Trakcare at Perth Royal Infirmary and Ninewells Hospital. Currently only Perth Royal Infirmary collect data including; the number of miscarriages, miscarriages as a proportion of pregnancies, gestation, maternal age, parity, ethnicity and SIMD. Ninewells Hospital reported that they have not started collecting data due to change in booking services firstly to Trakcare and then to BadgerNet, however, there is a plan to have a database and dashboard in the near future (Table 24). That said, some of the data above can be filtered out from the current system used by Ninewells Hospital. Both Ninewells Hospital and Perth Royal Infirmary record a miscarriage as any loss reported by a woman after a positive pregnancy test at home, while Arbroath Infirmary responded “unknown” when asked what their Health Board records as a miscarriage.