Maternity Clinical Indicators

• One indicator applies to pregnant people who registered with a lead maternity carer (LMC).
• Eight indicators apply to standard primiparae (definition used to identify a group of pregnant people for whom interventions and outcomes should be similar).
• Seven indicators apply to all people giving birth in New Zealand.
• Four apply to all babies born in New Zealand.

Data demonstrates that reported maternity service delivery and outcomes for pregnant people and babies vary between districts (former DHBs) and between individual secondary and tertiary facilities.

These findings merit further investigation of data quality and integrity as well as variations in local clinical practice management.

Since 2012, districts and maternity stakeholders have used national benchmarked data in their local maternity quality and safety programs to identify areas warranting further investigation.

To support further investigation, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora provides unit record clinical indicators data to district maternity quality and safety programme coordinators.

From 1 July 2019, diagnoses codes are assigned using the 11th edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision, Australian Modification (ICD-10-AM), and procedure codes are assigned using the 11th Edition of the Australian Classification of Health Interventions (ACHI).

Some maternity events (people giving birth in hospital and live babies born in hospital) are impacted by changes in the 11th edition clinical coding standards, particularly place of birth and type of birth data.

Therefore, the data in this web tool may show variation due to the change in coding standards rather than a true increase.

Further information about these coding changes can be found in the web tool and the maternity clinical indicators background documents.

In this web tool, maternity data was extracted and recalculated for the years 2009–2022 to reflect ongoing updates to data in the National Maternity Collection and the revision of population estimates and projections following each census.

For this reason, there may be small changes to some numbers and rates from those presented in previous publications and tables.

We have quality checked the collection, extraction, and reporting of the data presented here.

However, errors can occur. Contact us if you have any concerns regarding any of the data or analyses presented here, at data-enquiries@health.govt.nz

• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2018 - Published 12 October 2020
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2017 - Published 26 July 2019
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2016 - Published 27 February 2018
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2015 - Published 16 December 2016
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2014 - Published 03 May 2016

• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2013 - Published 10 September 2015
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2012 - Published 24 October 2014
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2011 - Published 20 May 2013
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2010 - Published 26 October 2012
• New Zealand Maternity Clinical Indicators 2009: Revised June 2012 - Published 05 June 2012