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Exclusive: £73m cost revealed of region's hospital blunders
NEGLIGENCE in the Yorkshire region's hospitals and health centres cost the taxpayer at least £73m last year – and the number of compensation claims for botched treatments is on the rise.
The region's health bodies received at least 1,167 claims or reports of clinical mistakes between April 2008 and March 2009, a 21 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.
Patients received less than two-thirds of the total payout as compensation for their injuries, as 35 per cent of the money went to lawyers.
Calls are growing for an overhaul of the system, described as "indefensibly expensive" by the authority tasked with running it, as many of the payments are thought to relate to claims made years previously, only settled after lengthy court battles.
Figures published by the NHS Litigation Authority, which handles negligence claims, reveal that 11.7m was paid out last year after cases involving the Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority.
Payouts for claims against the region's NHS trusts came to at least 58.4m, led by Leeds (9.9m), Doncaster and Bassetlaw (7m) and Hull and East Yorkshire (6.4m).
Primary care trusts dealt with claims resulting in a total payout of at least 3.8m, of which 40 per cent went on legal fees.
As in previous years, claims relating to sub-standard care for pregnant women and babies accounted for a large proportion of the total bill – payments for obstetrics cases in the region came to at least 24.5m.
Once a claim is settled, cash is paid by the litigation authority, which means it does not come out of a health body's budget.
But bodies must make an annual contribution to the authority's clinical negligence schemes, calculated by how many operations they carry out and how risky those operations are. The region's trusts made contributions totalling 46.7m last year.
Concerns about the system have been raised with High Court judge Lord Justice Jackson, who has been asked by the Government to review the cost of bringing civil cases such as clinical negligence claims.
In its submission to the review, the authority said: "It is not our case simply that costs are too high and rising, nor that the disproportion between claimant and defence costs is too great and widening, but, rather, that the whole costs structure is indefensibly expensive in relation to the compensation awarded or agreed. It is difficult to believe that it would be sustained were it not for the lack of motivation to change it."
The British Medical Association (BMA) has long campaigned for the introduction of a new compensation system that apportions no blame and sets limits on the size of damages.
A BMA spokesman said: "A better policy would be a system of no-fault compensation, which is the system adopted in many other countries.
"We would highlight the huge costs of litigation to the NHS and the effect that can have on the culture in particular trusts; there is a risk of doctors practising very defensively. Doctors should be thinking about what is in the best interests of their patients, not the potential cost to their trust if there is a litigation case."
The chief executive of patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents, Peter Walsh, said: "Even with the increase of claims, we can be certain that this only represents a fraction of the potentially valid claims that people could make.
"Those who do claim either need compensation to ease the burden of injuries sustained or they are angry that people have not been fully open and honest in the first place.
"Some of those who could claim, but do not, simply do not know what has happened. It is really quite worrying, the number of people who are not aware that something has gone wrong."
TOP 10 PAYOUTS by nhs trust
n Leeds Teaching Hospitals 9,894,343
n Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals 6,964,700
n Hull & East Yorkshire Hospitals 6,449,132
n Sheffield Teaching Hospitals 6,053,679
n Mid Yorkshire Hospitals 5,856,977
n Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals 3,600,937
n Rotherham Hospital 3,573,688
n Calderdale and Huddersfield 2,940,812
n Bradford Teaching Hospitals 2,653,482
n Barnsley Hospital 2,494,765
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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