Evaluation of NHS Resolution’s Early Notification Scheme and Maternity Incentive Scheme
Background
NHS Resolution is an organisation that provides indemnity insurance to NHS organisations. They also offer expertise to the NHS on resolving concerns and disputes fairly and run schemes that seek to support maternity safety and speed up investigations into potential medical negligence claims to provide a more rapid, caring response to families.
The evaluations focus on two initiatives run by NHS Resolution relating to the safety of maternity care.
- NHS Resolution’s Early Notification Scheme (EN Scheme) for specific obstetric brain injury is designed to speed up the process of investigating legal liability while increasing opportunities to learn and support safety for women and babies in the future. A previous evaluation run by NHS Resolution suggested that the scheme is enabling early interim compensation payments to be made to families.
- The Maternity Incentive Scheme (MIS) sets out ten safety actions, which have been developed and agreed by a range of agencies engaged in improving maternity safety and based on existing evidence. NHS organisations that can demonstrate they have achieved all ten of the safety actions in full recover the element of their contribution relating to the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts MIS fund and they also receive a share of any unallocated funds.
This evaluation will span both schemes. It will explore how they work in practice, and consider the impacts on and perceptions of the schemes for key groups affected by them – including women, families, clinicians and healthcare organisations.
Approach
The evaluation will involve a range of qualitative methods including interviews and documentary analysis.
Funding and ethics
This programme of work is funded by NHS Resolution.