The NHS trust has paid out a total of £2.4 billion for clinical negligence claims across England in the last year according to new data shared by the NHS Resolution. This is 9% higher than the year before with 38% of these payments related to maternity claims such as birth injury.
NHS Resolution are the Litigation Authority for the NHS and responsible for making payments to those who make claims against the NHS trust. Hospital trusts do not pay medical negligence themselves. Instead, hospital trusts pay a fee to their handling body (NHS Resolution) so they can be part of risk-pooling schemes in case a claim is placed against them.
According to NHS Resolution, the increase in payouts was mainly due to the rise in damages caused by hospitals. This caused legal costs to increase and result to claims value also rose. NHS Resolution also indicated that future costs of damages payments have risen by 52% in a year to £128.2 billion – which is similar to the NHS’ entire annual budget.
NHS Resolution chief executive Helen Vernon said: “We will be accelerating our work with others working in healthcare safety to improve outcomes for patients, with a particular focus on maternity.”
Speaking to Lancashire Post, the head of medical negligence, Lisa Jordan, says that, “every year they represented many patients whose lives had been impacted by unnecessary medical mistakes.” As a result, birth injury claims or maternity related cases, usually have larger payouts as they can also be dated back to many years.
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