In response to mounting national concerns about the variable quality and consistency of maternity care in England, NHS England is implementing a new daily reporting requirement for maternity and neonatal services. This measure mandates that hospitals submit daily morning data on capacity, safety, and performance. This new approach is being likened by some health leaders to the "command and control" methods utilised during the COVID-19 pandemic.
NHS England now requires maternity units to submit daily reports detailing workload, staffing levels, safety incidents, neonatal capacity, and other operational metrics. This initiative, which the Health Service Journal reported in December 2025, aims to give national teams real-time insight into system pressures and risks, facilitating early intervention when safety concerns arise.
The troubling context makes the need for this new requirement pressing. Multiple official and independent reviews in 2025 have highlighted persistent systemic failures in maternity and neonatal care. Specifically, the interim findings from the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, led by Baroness Valerie Amos, characterised the level of care as significantly worse than expected. These findings cited a lack of basic care, poor communication, and a failure to consistently listen to women and their families. Almost 17,000 women participated in a separate CQC survey, which revealed persistent quality gaps. Notably, close to one in five women felt that staff ignored their concerns during childbirth. Furthermore, significant percentages of respondents indicated that staff left them unattended at worrying times. Official data highlights these worrying trends, showing that serious complications like postpartum haemorrhage reached a five-year high in 2025. This increase fuels criticism that the quality of care is deteriorating precisely when demand is rising.
NHS England introduced daily reporting as part of a wider strategy to detect and respond to early safety signals more effectively. A key component of this initiative is the national roll-out of the Maternity Outcomes Signal System (MOSS). This system analyses routine maternity data in near real-time to identify unusual patterns. The appearance of amber or red alerts from MOSS triggers mandatory safety checks. Boards and regional teams must act on these warnings within strict deadlines, underscoring the critical need for data visibility.
Frontline leaders do not all receive these new daily reporting requirements openly. Some compare them to the high-pressure, "command and control" environment of COVID management, which also required daily situation reports and national dashboards to monitor system strain. While they acknowledge visibility's value, critics argue that this intense reporting risks overburdening already stressed local leaders, fosters a compliance culture, and reduces the time available for proactive quality improvement initiatives. They caution that this emphasis may prioritise data's quantity and completeness over meaningful clinical investigation into the fundamental causes of harm.
While real-time reporting and tools such as MOSS excel at identifying emerging risk clusters by amplifying signals often lost in quarterly cycles, we must pair this benefit with the capacity to act. Without pairing data collection with the necessary resources (staffing, rapid improvement teams, and local governance changes), the reporting burden will simply increase clinical and administrative workloads without yielding improved outcomes.
The ultimate impact of these daily reports determines their practical use: ensuring regional and national teams provide rapid, focused support; confirming independent reviews translate data into necessary, fundamental systemic change; and, crucially, guaranteeing that women and families perceive genuine, tangible improvements in their safety, dignity, and communication. While daily data can function as an early warning system, it unlocks its value only when it drives decisions that correct identified care failures. Otherwise, this new level of monitoring risks simply documenting problems instead of becoming a true catalyst for sustained improvement in a service facing intense public oversight.
