Moray Maternity Services Review: report

Foreword

"The Best Start: A Five-Year Forward Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Care in Scotland", published in January 2017, set out Scotland's strategy for the future of maternity care:

"Maternity and neonatal care and services matter to the health and wellbeing of Scotland's people. The health, development, social, and economic consequences of childbirth and the early weeks of life are profound, and the impact, both positive and negative, is felt by individual families and communities as well as across the whole of society."

This is a sentiment the Moray Maternity Services Review Group (the Review Group) has heard clearly, and it is with this in mind that we have approached our work.

Maternity care and related services provided at Dr Gray's Hospital (Dr Gray's) in Elgin have experienced significant challenges in recent years, including the ability to recruit and retain the specialist staff necessary to provide a full range of obstetric, neonatal and anaesthetic care. This has led to the protracted and controversial debate about the future of the service.

To deliver the task we were set by the Cabinet Secretary of Health and Sport, the Review Group has focused on listening to as wide a range of stakeholders as possible, and then used the professional input of our clinical experts to reach a series of conclusions and recommendations.

From the start of our work, we understood the task was going to be complex and very probably take longer to work through than the original timeframe. However, it is our hope that the output from the Moray Maternity Services Review (the Review) will be of benefit to those who work in the service, to those charged with planning and delivering services, and most importantly to all the mothers and babies who have a right to be appropriately supported through their pregnancy and birth experience.

Finally, as a Review Group, we sincerely believe that we are making robust recommendations that are most appropriate for Moray at the current time, and looking to the future. We would encourage all parties to work collaboratively to deliver this for the benefit of the whole community.