Botched surgery costs NHS £6.75m
Consultant continues to practise in NHS
HEALTH: The total bill for settling compensation claims for botched operations carried out by Yorkshire consultant orthopaedic surgeon Manjit Bhamra has now reached £6.75m after almost a decade.
This has been a complex group of claims. A spokesman for NHS Resolution, which deals with negligence claims.
THE TOTAL bill for settling compensation claims for botched operations carried out by a Yorkshire surgeon has now reached £6.75m.
Legal action against Manjit Bhamra, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, has been running for almost a decade and there are still outstanding claims against Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust and Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust, where Mr Bhamra currently works.
So far 55 claims against Mr Bhamra have been settled with payouts totalling £4.5m. A further £2.25m has gone on legal costs, mostly to lawyers of the patients. The claims against the consultant largely involved hip, knee, elbow and shoulder surgery at Rotherham General Hospital, where he worked full-time up to 2007 and then part-time until 2009 when he moved to Mid Yorkshire.
A Freedom of Information request revealed 52 claims following operations at Rotherham have been settled for a total of £4,438,534 with one claim still outstanding. Payments have ranged from £1,750 to £830,000, with liability accepted in most cases. Legal costs have run to £2,191,097.92, the bulk of which has gone to claimants’ lawyers.
Three claims totalling £55,000 have been settled following operations at Mid Yorkshire, which runs hospitals in Wakefield, Dewsbury and Pontefract. Liability was accepted in each case. A further £68,416 has been paid to claimants’ lawyers while another eight claims remain outstanding.
Despite the scale of compensation and the number of claims involved, Mr Bhamra was cleared of any wrongdoing by the General Medical Council (GMC) in 2011 and has retained a full medical licence since. It has previously been revealed that patients suffered lasting damage following operations carried out by Mr Bhamra.
In one case, a patient had a hip operation in February 2006 which resulted in a fracture to his pelvis and damage to the sciatic nerve which left him with an unstable hip and seriously impaired mobility. Compensation is paid by the NHS Resolution (formerly known as the NHS Litigation Authority) which co-ordinates negligence claims on behalf of health trusts who each pay into a national scheme.
Under the funding formula, individual trusts’ payments into the scheme reflect the number and level of compensation payments they have been responsible for. Despite the significant amount paid to lawyers, NHS Resolution insisted its approach had aimed to reduce legal costs.
A spokesman said: “This has been a complex group of claims involving a large number of patients. A protocol has been agreed with most claimant solicitors which includes timescales. Additionally levels of legal fees have been agreed at substantially reduced rates. We have a duty both to compensate fairly and to preserve funds for NHS care. We have worked with the claimant solicitors to ensure claims are dealt with appropriately whilst taking steps to keep costs as low as possible.”
Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust declined to comment. Dr Karen Stone, medical director at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “The trust is unable to comment on the time it takes to settle claims; this is a matter outside of the trust’s control. The trust understands that the cases have been dealt with under the confidential alternative dispute resolution protocol.”