No win no fee not to blame for high medical negligence costs

It was recently revealed that botched treatments in Yorkshire's hospitals and health centres cost the taxpayer at least £83m in only one year. This is the same story across the UK. Although many are quick to blame 'greedy' no win no fee lawyers, it seems there is a lot more behind the high cost to the NHS.

Many of the compensation payments are thought to relate to clinical negligence claims made years previously, which have only been settled after lengthy battles in the courts. With no win no fee arrangements it is now easier than ever to make a claim against a hospital for substandard treatment.

Now, with Yorkshires health bodies receiving nearly 1,000 claims a year, patient care campaigners are calling for the system to be overhauled to help ensure claimants are compensated sooner and less money is spent on legal costs.

One top clinical negligence lawyer has said the amount paid to law firms involved in major cases was "a tiny figure" compared to the billions of pounds the NHS loses annually through less serious procedural errors.

Once a claim is settled, cash is paid centrally by the NHSLA, meaning it does not come out of a health body's budget. The health body is required to make a contribution every year based on estimation made by the NHSLA, so essentially as the amount of compensation paid rises the estimations will continue to rise also.

The British Medical Association has called for the introduction of a new compensation system that apportions no blame and sets limits on the size of damages. "It is important that patients have a right to make their complaints and, where appropriate, receive compensation," a spokesman said.

"However, 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," he added.

Yorkshire's health body received nearly one thousand claims last year and many of these are expected to take years to settle. With the rising cost of legal fees this could well mean that the cost to health bodies will increase.

Peter Walsh, of patients' charity Action Against Medical Accidents, said: "the value of settlements had soared in recent years because more patients were surviving but then relying on costly around-the-clock care."

He added that: "Government measures had made it harder for people to qualify for legal aid, forcing them to bring no win no fee cases which are more costly to the NHS when settled in the claimant's favour."

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

He called for the Government to press ahead with schemes it promised in the NHS Redress Act 2006, which was designed to promote an alternative to litigation in clinical negligence cases.

It seems that Yorkshire is mirroring the rest of the country with high claims which are naively being put down to a growing compensation culture made worse by unscrupulous no win no fee lawyers. The unfortunate truth is little is being done to speed up the claims process, nor stopping the mistake being made in the first place. So if nothing is done the annual bill for claims is just going to get bigger and bigger until something is done about it.