NHS faces huge clinical negligence legal fees bill
The recent Freedom of Information request into the NHS England has showed that the NHS England faces paying out £4.3bn in legal fees to settle outstanding claims of clinical negligence, BBC has reported Tuesday 21st January 2020.
Each year the NHS receives more than 10,000 new claims for compensation. The Department of Health has pledged to tackle “the unsustainable rise in the cost of clinical negligence”. Estimates published last year reported that the NHS England’s total budget in 2018-19 was £129bn.
The numbers are alarming and it appears that the current system is ineffective in responding to the needs and priorities of both, the medical professionals and those who suffered from the medical mistakes. The excessive cost is driven by failures in patient safety. As clinical negligence solicitors, we see these alarming features on numerous cases that we deal with. Often we see the cases when the trust fights the cases to Court and then settles on the door of the Court. This significantly increases the costs of the case for the taxpayers and adds additional stress for the injured people, who are fighting for their rights.
It is fundamentally important that the system is reviewed in order to improve the patient safety and the effective resolution of the claims for those, who unfortunately have been injured.
Our medical negligence solicitors have a proven track record in cases dealing with NHS and private medical claims of all kinds. The majority of our medical and clinical negligence claims are funded by a No Win No Fee arrangement.
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By Darja Cernobrivec Clinical Negligence and Personal Injury Solicitor at GA Solicitors