NHS faces huge medical negligence bill

It has been revealed that hospitals in Yorkshire have cost the taxpayer £83 million in the last year, after medical negligence claims and botched surgeries left many suffering unnecessary pain and personal injuries.

Between April 2007 and March last year cases involving terrible care for pregnant women and babies contributed to most of the claims and payout sum.

Hospitals treating their wounds

Payout claims against NHS trusts totalled to £64 million and were linked to four major units throughout the UK. Mid Yorkshire paid out £7.7 million, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole shelled out £6.6million, Leeds paid out £6.4 million and Sheffield paid £6.2 million.

Medical negligence compensation payouts reached £18.2 million in 2007-8, according to statistics published by the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA). Therefore, the huge amounts have left many hospitals reaching for the life support.

As a result of the high number of claims, patient care organisations and medics have called for a change in the system, as the region’s health bodies are now receiving nearly 1,000 claims per year. Therefore, an urgent reform to allow patients to be compensated earlier must be considered.

Peter Walsh, of patients’ charity Action Against Medical Accidents has urged the Government to go ahead with schemes it promised in the NHS Redress Act 2006, which was designed to encourage medical negligence court alternatives.
The claims system

When a claim is settled, cash is paid centrally by the NHSLA, which means it does not come out of a health institutes budget.

However, many bodies must make a yearly contribution to the NHSLA’s medical negligence programme, calculated by assessing how many operations they carry out and are analysed at how dangerous these operations are.

Therefore, the British Medical Association has asked for the introduction of a new compensation process that apportions no liability and sets boundaries on the size of damages.

“The current system is cumbersome and expensive and takes money away from direct patient care. Without action to address this problem the alternative is that doctors will increasingly practise defensive medicine and hold back on some treatments for fear of legal action. This would not be in the best interests of the patient,” a spokesperson said.

However, they added: “It is important that patients have a right to make their complaints and, where appropriate, receive compensation.”

Compensation claims are increasing yearly, and this is because more patients survive but then rely heavily on expensive around-the-clock care.

Walsh noted: “None of these costs would be incurred at all if we avoided the mistakes from happening in the first place. The biggest cost is not the financial cost; it is the human cost underlying every claim.”

Medical negligence lawyer John Pickering reminded the public: “Standards are not falling, but there are practices which should be improved. There are incidents which occur from time to time which should not happen.

“Above all, they need to learn more from their mistakes. There is nothing more distressing for those of us who work with injured people than seeing the same mistakes being repeated.”