About this item

Issue date:
21 August 2023
Status:
Current
Corporate Authors:
Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO), Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora
Type:
Standard
Topic:
Health IT, Maternity
ISBN:
978-1-99-110032-0 (online)

Summary

The standard defines the minimum data set to be recorded by maternity care providers about each pregnancy under their care. This covers community-based and hospital midwives, general practitioners, obstetricians, other medical specialists and their support staff. The maternity care summary centres on the pregnant/birthing/postnatal woman/person and includes administrative and clinical information about the pregnancy, labour and birth, and baby or babies. The standard covers the whole maternity journey, including the early postnatal period and up to six weeks following the birth.

The standard was first published in May 2020 and updated in April 2022. This publication includes changes to some data elements in response to feedback from users and to ensure the standard is fit for purpose. Further enhancement to SNOMED CT codes has been applied.

Use of the standard ensures that information related to maternity care is consistently recorded, contributing to high-quality care of women/people and babies. The data set can be shared to support continuity of care between providers and communication with whānau and family. The structured and coded information enables meaningful benchmarking of services and other analytics.

Adoption roadmap

Te Whatu Ora’s national maternity programme will lead adoption of this standard by maternity care providers and their industry partners as part of the Maternity Action Plan 2019–23.

An HL7® FHIR® application programming interface (API) based on this standard is being developed with completion in 2024 to enable other systems to access maternity records.

Rollout of the standard to all maternity care service providers will be completed by 2025.