NHS England: The Maternal Care Bundle – a care bundle for reducing maternal mortality and morbidity (6 January 2026)

Summary

The Maternal Care Bundle (MCB) sets best practice standards across five areas of clinical care, for implementation by NHS providers and commissioners across England.

1. Venous thromboembolism (VTE) – reducing thrombotic events in early pregnancy by risk assessing all pregnant women at the earliest opportunity before antenatal booking and providing rapid access to thromboprophylaxis for those identified as at high risk.
2. Pre-hospital and acute care – ensuring unwell pregnant women receive the right care at the right time through improving access to urgent obstetric and maternal medicine care; and implementing a common approach to the monitoring, identification and management of maternal deterioration across all care settings.
3. Epilepsy in pregnancy – improving control of seizures by ensuring timely access to specialist multidisciplinary epilepsy care during and after pregnancy.
4. Maternal mental health – improving the identification and response to perinatal mental health concerns through the consistent use of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended screening tools and timely referral to appropriate specialist support.
5. Obstetric haemorrhage – improving the management of haemorrhage through standardised approaches to timely identification, escalation and response to obstetric bleeding, along with ongoing multidisciplinary review and learning.

The aim is to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity and reduce inequalities in these adverse outcomes.