NNAP Healthcare Improvement Strategy

The overarching aim of this strategy is to assess whether babies admitted to neonatal units in England, Wales and Scotland receive consistent, high quality care in relation to the NNAP audit measures, which are aligned to a set of professionally agreed guidelines and standards, to identify areas for improvement and to empower stakeholders to use audit data to stimulate improvement in care delivery and outcomes.

To achieve the aims of the NNAP Healthcare Improvement Strategy aims, the NNAP sets out four approaches to stimulating improvement:

  1. High quality data outputs that identify areas for action and support stakeholders’ improvement initiatives
  2. Sharing of best practice and quality improvement resources
  3. Collaboration and engagement with regional and national initiatives
  4. Parent and public engagement

The overall success of the strategy will be monitored against identified improvement goals which reflect existing national priorities and are consistent with quality improvement ambitions.

These goals are:

  1. Reduce the difference between the networks with the most negative and most positive treatment effect for mortality until discharge home (3.8% based on 2021 results) by 0.3% per year over a 10-year period, with no associated increase in mortality in the network with the lowest observed rate.
  2. Reduce the difference between the networks with the most negative and most positive treatment effect for mortality until discharge home (3.8% based on 2021 results) by 0.3% per For babies born at less than 34 weeks gestation, increase the proportion receiving all measured elements of the MatNeoSIP perinatal optimisation plan by 2% per year over a ten-year period based on an estimated baseline proportion of 6.8% observed in the NNAP 2021 data.
  3. For babies born at less than 32 weeks gestation, increase the proportion discharged home from neonatal care having experienced no serious complication of prematurity (late onset bloodstream infection, NEC, BPD and serious preterm brain injury and mortality) by 1% per year over a ten-year period based on an estimated baseline proportion of 51% observed in the NNAP 2021 data

You can download the full strategy below.