NHS pays £12.6m price of cancer case blunders
A RECORD number of patients successfully sued the NHS last year because doctors failed to spot they were suffering from cancer, figures have revealed.
The NHS body that deals with hospital compensation claims paid nearly three people every week after medics missed key chances to spot telltale signs of the disease.
The cancer mistakes cost the NHS a total of £12.6million in compensation last year, up from £10.2million for the year 2015/2016.
Overall, they were among a total of 1,392 claims worth £153.5 million where patients sued because hospital doctors failed to make a correct diagnosis of any illness.
The past 10 years have seen payments for a missed cancer diagnosis being made to 990 people, with total payouts of £75.7million.
And compensation is on the rise, with this year’s tally of patients and their payouts running at more than double that of five years ago.
The figures, which were released by NHS Resolution under Freedom of Informa tion Act laws, show the biggest payment last year to a patient whose cancer was misdiagnosed was £800,000.
In previous years there have been payouts of more than £1million.
Patients’ groups said the evidence was “frightening” and called for a reduction in mistakes when diagnosing potentially deadly tumours.
Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern, said: “It is frightening. You go to hospital hoping that people know what they are doing.”
Research found delays in diagnosis, typically between one and three months, allowed cancer to spread in a third of identified cases.
Delays and errors were most often seen in gynaecological, skin and urological cancers.
GP Lisa Steen, who died last year aged 43, criticised medical colleagues for failing to spot that she was suffering from a rare kidney cancer.
Her illness was only uncovered two years after she first went to professionals and by then the disease had spread.
Her husband Raymond Brown said: “She was just so angry and frustrated that she didn’t get a diagnosis and seemed to be hitting a brick wall with every doctor she went to see.”
An NHS England spokesman said: “With more people accessing testing, funding for effective new treatments and diagnostics, and continued action to reduce smoking, cancer survival is now at a record high.
“However, a big focus remains on early diagnosis, which is why the NHS continues to invest in new and innovative ways of catching more cancers early.”