NHS trust criticised over death of newborn Lancashire baby received £730k for ‘safe’ maternity care

On Friday, a senior coroner concluded that Ida Lock died from a lack of oxygen during her delivery at Royal Lancaster Infirmary because midwives did not provide basic medical care.

HM Senior Coroner for Lancashire Dr James Adeley said Ida’s death was contributed to by the lead midwife’s “wholly incompetent failure” to give basic neonatal resuscitation.

He also also identified eight missed opportunities by midwives to alter the infant’s clinical course.

Ida died a week later in November 2019 from a serious brain injury.

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In 2019, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT), which runs Royal Lancaster Infirmary, received £734,112 under the Maternity Incentive Scheme run by NHS Resolution, the health service’s insurance arm.

The scheme offers a financial incentive to improve maternity safety within NHS trusts if they meet requirements in 10 areas.

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UHMBT reported it had met all the scheme’s key safety actions in 2019 and received the payout, but later had to repay most of it after a critical report of its maternity services by inspectors from the Care Quality Commission.

The trust was the subject of a damning report in 2015 that found a “lethal mix” of problems at another of its maternity units at Furness General Hospital that led to the unnecessary deaths of 11 babies and one mother between 2004 and 2013.

The Morecambe Bay investigation, chaired by Dr Bill Kirkup, uncovered a series of failures “at every level” from the unit to those responsible for regulating and monitoring the trust.

Ida’s inquest at County Hall, Preston, revealed similar shortcomings in clinical governance that were uncovered in Dr Kirkup’s inquiry.

Following the hearing, her parents Ryan Lock and Sarah Robinson, from Morecambe, criticised UHMBT for a lack of candour about the care of their daughter and said it should not be “a test of endurance for bereaved and bewildered parents” to work out what happened to their child.