A report by a committee of MPs has said that the NHS will have to pay out £15.7bn in compensation claims for medical negligence, a 10% rise in a year.
The report, Whole of Government Accounts (WGA), which comes from the Public Accounts Committee, says that the figure, which is about a seventh of the health service’s whole annual budget, is at least partly due to the compensation culture, fuelled by no win, no fee lawyers, and it blames the Treasury for not reacting to this new trend and having no plans on how to scale back the costs. It is estimated that about a third of the compensation ends up being paid to lawyers.
The NHS received over 8,500 medical negligence claims last year, up by a third on 2009/10, and the bill is a calculation based on the number of claims the NHS thinks that it won’t be able to successfully defend, so it is possible that the £15.7bn figure actually underestimates the true picture.
The Department of Health responded to the report by saying that, whilst the vast majority of patients receive good quality care, it is only right that those who don’t should receive the compensation they are entitled to and added that the government’s proposals for reforming the civil litigation system would support the NHS in settling claims.
