Responding to the Care Quality Commission's first quarterly Market Report, NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar said:
"The NHS is striving to comply with all the Care Quality Commission's essential standards. This snapshot of the results of targeted inspection activity over recent years provides some useful pointers as to where organisations commonly fall short.
"NHS organisations will want to look closely at these results to identity what they should be doing to improve standards and ensure compliance.
"It is important to note that the number of organisations deemed to be falling short so seriously that the most drastic action was required is small. However, this is another salutary reminder that the NHS must not drop the ball on caring for patients as it faces significant financial and organisational pressures."
On maternity Mr Farrar said:
"We know that the NHS can provide better maternity care by risk-assessing each mother to be and identifying the right place for each pregnancy. This includes providing a range of services for higher risk births in fewer more specialist centres, and offering real choice in midwife led centres and at home for low risk births.
"In some places this may lead to reorganising services and changing location for higher risk births. However maternity services provide a good example of where the NHS can change to improve outcomes, provide better patient experience and manage its resources effectively."
On record keeping Mr Farrar said:
"Proper information systems are the bedrock of high quality care, and it is the responsibility of everyone working in the NHS to ensure that accurate information is collected to feed into these processes. We made it clear in our response to the Government's recent Information Strategy that proper information systems must be core NHS business.
"The challenge now will be to match the rhetoric of the strategy with the reality of getting it done. There is a lot of detail in the strategy still to be worked out which will not be easy in the present financial climate."
