Private and Voluntary Health Care (Wales) Regulations 2002

Obstetric services — further requirements

39.—(1) The registered person shall ensure that—

(a) any death of a patient in an independent hospital during, or as a result of, pregnancy or childbirth; and

(b) any stillbirth or neonatal death in an independent hospital are reported to any person undertaking an enquiry into such deaths on behalf of the Secretary of State(1).

(2) The registered person shall ensure that facilities are available within the hospital to provide adequate treatment to patients who have undergone a delivery requiring surgical intervention or the use of forceps and that such patients are cared for by an appropriately experienced midwife.

(3) The registered person shall ensure that appropriate arrangements are in place for the immediate transfer, where necessary, of a patient and her new born child to critical care facilities within the hospital or elsewhere in the near vicinity.

(4) The registered person shall ensure that appropriate arrangements are in place for the treatment and, if necessary transfer to a specialist care facility, of a very sick patient or new born child.

(5) The registered person shall ensure that a maternity record is maintained for each patient receiving obstetric services and each child born in the hospital, which—

(i) includes the details specified in regulation 20(1)(a) and in Parts I and II of Schedule 4; and

(ii) is retained for a period of not less than 25 years beginning on the date of the last entry; and the requirements of regulation 20(2) shall apply to that record.

(6) In this regulation—

• “stillbirth” has the meaning given to it in the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953(2);

• “neonatal death” means the death of a child before the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the date of the child’s birth.

(1)

The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths and the Confidential Enquiry into Stillbirths and Deaths in Infancy are currently undertaken on behalf of the Secretary of State for Health and other Departments by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.

(2)

1953 c. 20. See section 41, as amended by the Still-Birth (Definition) Act 1992 (c. 29), section 1(1).