Counting cost of medical mistakes

Medical blunders by hospitals across Kent have cost the NHS more than £200 million in the past five years, it has emerged.

Mistakes at East Kent Hospitals (EKHUFT), Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells (MTW), Dartford and Gravesham and Medway NHS Trusts have equalled payouts of a staggering £203,760,195.65 since 2012, according to the latest figures, which also include court costs.

EKHUFT and MTW both feature in the top 20 trusts in the country for total payouts in that period, with bills coming to £73.8m and £61.8m respectively - some of which relate to historic cases several decades ago.

Many of the multi-million pound claims are maternity cases, particularly those for avoidable cerebral palsy, which can even exceed £20m per claim, according to NHS Resolution - the body which provides trusts with medical negligence indemnity cover.

Trusts pay an annual insurance-like contribution to NHS Resolution which uses the cash to settle all clinical negligence claims, so money paid out in litigation cases is not taken from frontline patient care budgets.

In Kent, all trusts contributed significantly more in premiums for 2016/17 than they did in previous years, according to their annual accounts, with EKHUFT paying some £18.3m compared to £16.2m in 2015/16.

Total payouts for medical negligence have also generally shot up, but payments relating to errors at EKHUFT were lower last year than in 2015/16 but health chiefs still had to fork out some £16.8m.

The trusts argue the data needs to be appreciated in context as they are among some of the biggest in the country, with hundreds of thousands of patients attending their hospitals.

Health chiefs say they are taking a number of steps to cut medical negligence costs, including capping fees that legal firms can recoup from the taxpayer when they win low-value cases and introducing a volun- tary alternative compensation scheme for infants who suffer avoidable brain injury at birth.

Others include cash incentives for trusts which take action to make maternity services safer and simply trying to resolve more cases before they go to court.

A spokesperson for EKHUFT, which runs the William Harvey in Ashford and hospitals in Canterbury and Margate, said: “Although very rare, serious incidents sometimes occur and we take these extremely seriously.

“They are thoroughly investigated and we learn from the experience, changing medical procedures, so that the risk of mistakes is eliminated as much as possible.

“The trust carries out 50,000 operations a year and we have more than one million contacts with patients.

“As a large trust we perform more procedures than most, which means payments will be relatively higher in comparison with those of smaller trusts.

“Payments are decided by NHS Resolution – not the trust. The payments have increased over the years but there are many reasons for this, including inflation.

“The sum of payment is not reflective of the seriousness of an incident. Insurance costs rise with increased payments, but the Trust plans and mitigates for this accordingly.

“The trust has a strong safety record. For example, we received a ‘Top Hospitals’ 2017 award, an accolade based on the evaluation of over 20 key performance indicators covering safety, clinical effectiveness, data quality, patient experience and quality of care.”

A spokesperson for NHS Resolution added: “Incidents in maternity account for 10% of the number of claims we receive each year but 50% of the expected cost of the claims.

“This is because of the very high cost of cases which tragically involve brain damage at birth where provision must be made for life-long and complex care needs.

“Whilst thankfully, these incidents are very rare, each one offers an opportunity for learning in order to prevent the same thing happening again.”