Huge cost of NHS maternity care claims shows need for urgent legal reform says MDU
Today's report into maternity services in England by the National Audit Office (NAO) shows the huge burden being placed on the NHS for paying clinical negligence claims, the Medical Defence Union (MDU) said today.
The report[1] found that £482 million was paid out in 2012-13 for maternity claims, accounting for a third of the total NHS clinical negligence bill. The number of maternity claims rose by 80 per cent in the five years up to that point. Responding to the report, the MDU said urgent legal reform is needed to the system for compensating patients in clinical negligence claims.
Dr Christine Tomkins, MDU chief executive said:
"This is a staggering amount of money for the NHS to pay out in damages for maternity claims in one year. And of course this is only a fraction of the NHS's total clinical negligence bill which was a jaw-dropping £1.25bn over 2012-13. As the NAO points out, each of these claims represents an adverse outcome for the women and babies concerned, but also for the taxpayer.
"When you consider that this is money that would otherwise be spent on patient care, you can see why we have been calling for urgent legal reform. No one would deny that patients who have been negligently harmed should be fairly compensated but ultimately every citizen is paying for this inexorable rise in NHS claims costs.
"We agree with the NAO that more must be done to improve risk management and safety of care. But the practice of medicine is complex and can never be totally risk free. We must do everything we can to avoid negligent injury to patients but this must go hand in hand with legal reform to prevent the massive increases in damages we are seeing."
Notes:
1 Maternity services in England, National Audit Office, 8 November 2013 http://www.nao.org.uk/report/maternity-services-england/
