About this project
Built by an NHS obstetrician. Written for families.
Why I built this
I'm a UK obstetrician. I spend a lot of my working week in conversations about where women should give birth - and I've noticed something uncomfortable: the quality of those conversations depends almost entirely on how much the patient already knows when she walks through the door.
Women who arrive informed - who have looked at CQC reports, who know their unit's C-section rate, who have a sense of what questions to ask - have materially different experiences. Not always better outcomes in a clinical sense, but more agency, less fear, and more confidence in the decisions they make.
The information that enables that exists. It has always existed. It just requires clinical literacy and hours of searching to access. That felt like a problem I could fix.
What this site is not
It is not a ranking. It does not tell you which unit is best. A unit with a high C-section rate may be serving a population with more complex pregnancies. A unit with a lower CQC rating may be actively improving. A unit with fewer facilities may offer continuity of care that data cannot capture.
The data gives you a starting point. The clinical conversation - with your midwife, your GP, your obstetrician - gives you the rest. This site is designed to make that conversation better, not to replace it.
Principles
- →No rankings. Every metric appears alongside its national average and an explanation of what drives it - never a score, never a verdict.
- →Source everything. Every number links to its original publication - NHS England, CQC, NMPA, MBRRACE-UK. If you want to verify it, you can.
- →Plain language without dumbing down. Clinical concepts explained in plain English - not sanitised into meaninglessness.
- →Accuracy above all. If a figure is wrong or outdated, tell us and we will correct it.
A note on data currency and completeness
This site does not receive a live data feed. Every figure shown comes from national datasets published annually by NHS England, NMPA, MBRRACE-UK and the CQC. By the time data is collected, validated, de-identified and released, it typically reflects activity from 12–24 months earlier.
The data is only as complete as what trusts submit. Units that contribute fully to national audits will have richer profiles. Those that submit late or partially will appear to have gaps - which itself carries information about a unit's engagement with national quality improvement.
If you work in a maternity unit and your data looks incomplete: the most direct route to a better profile here is to improve submissions to NHS England Maternity Statistics, the NMPA and MBRRACE-UK. This site will reflect them when those datasets are next published.
What's next
The current version covers NHS maternity units across England with clinical outcomes, patient experience data and facility information.
Coming next: postcode search, side-by-side unit comparison, verified post-birth patient reviews, and expansion to Wales and Scotland. If you're a journalist, researcher or NHS commissioner interested in the data, get in touch.