‘Free pass’ for hospitals that make fatal errors
NHS hospitals responsible for patient deaths will get a free pass at inquests under Government proposals to cap legal costs, the lawyer for victims of the Bristol heart scandal has warned.
Coroners’ hearings to establish what went wrong would become “truncated” and chances to learn lessons lost, said Laurence Vick, who represented multiple families in the wake of the 1990s fatalities.
Loved ones with limited means are often represented for free at inquests by lawyers who gamble on getting paid after winning a subsequent compensation battle in court. The hearings are considered the best opportunity for interrogating failings and making recommendations for improvements that benefit the wider public.
But under new proposals, NHS trusts which lose negligence cases will not have to pay the injured party’s legal costs if the value of the claim is less than £25,000. Many cases of baby, infant and geriatric death fall into this category.
Mr Vick said the cap would make it all but impossible for ordinary families to find lawyers capable of holding hospital bosses to account at inquests.
Combined with a public inquiry, the series of inquests that followed the scandal at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, where babies died at higher than normal rates following cardiac surgery, paved the way for new measures which transformed clinical practice.
By 2010, the 30-day death rate among children who had undergone heart operations had fallen to 4.2 per cent, compared to 2.5 per cent a decade earlier. Mr Vick said: “This will have a massive impact,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Inquests these days are much more searching than back in the day, and you often need specialist solicitors and barristers.
“We risk going back to the days when hearings are just two hours long and rely on evidence only from a consultant working at the hospital concerned. You will get families finding there is no accountability.”
Included in the Government proposals are measures to cap the amount successful victims of clinical negligence can claim for expert evidence before and during court cases.
Claimants could be restricted to £600 of expert fees. However most experts charge between £1,000 and £2,000 just to prepare a report.
Sharon Allison, a leading member of Actions against Medical Accidents (AVMA), a patient safety charity, said that without a preliminary report many victims would be unable to assess if they stood even a chance of securing compensation.
She said an AVMA poll of medical experts had found “most” had said they would not prepare reports under the proposed new fee cap.
The proposed cap for medical negligence fees comes amid a wider review by Lord Justice Jackson looking at fixed costs across the wider system of civil litigation, due to be published today.