Suffolk and North East Essex LMNS

The experiences and voices of our patients and families are central to all we do, and as an LMNS we seek to develop and improve our services together with those who give us their valuable feedback.

Read more about how we work with patients and families here –

We have teams dedicated to helping us ensure quality and safety, and drive improvement.

These are the:

• LMNS Safety forum
• LMNS Neonatal workstream
• LMNS iMatter – including what matters to each individual patient and ensuring equity
• LMNS preterm and complex pregnancy workstream

Our board oversees the work that we do and seeks assurance that we collectively perform in line with national standards offering safe and high-quality care for our families in Suffolk and north east Essex. It is called the ‘LMNS Strategic Group’ and is made up of professionals and patient and family representatives from across the area.

Our areas of focus include:

• Setting clear priorities to meet our ambitions and increasingly provide care based on individual patient choice.
• Working with the voluntary and community sector to create maternity ambassadors and advocates for diverse communities.
• Implementing the NHS England Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services, The main themes include:
  • Listening to and working with women and families with compassion.
  • Growing, retaining, and supporting our workforce.
  • Developing and sustaining a culture of safety, learning and support.
  • Reducing inequalities in health care and addressing variations in outcomes.
  • Developing and improving our services with families, frontline staff and partners working in local health and care, system leaders, and people working throughout the system
  • Promoting standards and structures that underpin safer, more individual, and more equitable care.

We have a number of quality improvement projects that include:

• Improving the process for assessing patients and providing the most appropriate care or treatment
• Encouraging smoke free pregnancies
• Reducing preterm births and stillbirths
• Reducing post-partum haemorrhage (blood loss after birth)
• Induction of labour
• Supporting mental health before and after childbirth
• Improving antenatal education
• Improving the care of babies born prematurely
• Improving transitional care services to reduce separation of mothers and babies who need neonatal care.
• Perinatal pelvic health services