Hospitals in £2m payout for injuries and medical blunders

PATIENTS and hospital staff have been awarded more than £2 million after launching compensation claims against Black Country NHS trusts over the last five years.

Dozens of payments were made to members of the public and hospital workers who lodged claims, including for medical blunders and injuries – with one person “electrocuted”.

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, which runs Sandwell General and Birmingham City hospitals, settled claims worth the most – more than £1.2 million since 2017.

But bosses say only the first £10,000 of individual claims would have been met directly by the trust as that is its insurance excess.

Although Dudley Group NHS Trust, which runs Russells Hall, paid out a much lower total of £67,000, it settled the most claims with members of the public.

The trust was handed a record fine of £2.5 million last month over the deaths of 14-year-old Kaysie-Jane Robinson and Tipton mum-of-six Natalie Billingham.

Elsewhere, Walsall NHS Trust, which runs the town’s Manor Hospital, paid out £474,000 and Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), which oversees New Cross, settled claims totalling £451,000. The data was released to the Birmingham Post following a Freedom of Information request.

Most of the Sandwell trust settlements were made with employees, with the biggest single payment to a member of staff being £67,344.

A member of the public received £90,000 after taking action against the trust in 2019/20. Further details of the case were not provided. It was one of 11 payments to members of the public over the five-year period.

Walsall’s trust made 41 payments to staff and five to members of the public.

The most common reason for lodging a compensation claim in Walsall was because staff had been injured falling over. This happened 14 times. Eight cases involved needle incidents with staff.

Two payments were made to members of the public over “data protection incidents” and to another who suffered “electrocution”. Further details were not provided in these cases.

It was a different story at Dudley Group, which made the majority of compensation payments to the public – 95 in total. Fifteen claims were settled with staff.

The bulk of RWT’s payouts – £391,000 – were for personal injury, while other reasons for payments included loss of personal effects, clinical negligence and damage to vehicles.

Gwen Nuttall, chief operating officer at RTW, recently said: “Improvements in standards of health and safety have resulted in almost 50 per cent fewer personal injury claims in recent years, and we have made strong progress developing new risk management processes ahead of a season when we usually experience more trips and falls due to winter weather.”