NHS negligence bill could be cut

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has suggested that the NHS's multi-billion pound negligence bill could be cut by apologising to patients and mounting a vigorous defence against bogus claims. The minister was commenting after the NHS Litigation Authority, the body that oversees claims made against the health service, released figures disclosing that half of the cases it faces are rejected because they are "without merit", a figure which has risen by a third in two years. The number of claims faced by the NHS this year is expected to rise by a fifth to about 12,000.

(source: The Daily Telegraph)

Medical accidents causing hundreds of deaths every month

Government figures have revealed that more than 300 patients are dying each month because of medical mistakes.

 

Detailed figures from NHS England showed that of 683,883 cases reported during the six months from October 2012 to March this year, 1,834 patients died. A total of 3,479 suffered severe injury due to blunders and more than 40,000 suffered impermanent injury. A further 470,000 were put at risk but suffered no harm.

 

The new figures represent a 6.4% increase on the same period the previous year, when there were 665,859 cases, including 1,593 deaths.

 

Peter Walsh, chief executive of the charity Action Against Medical Accidents said: "These figures are terrible and show four years after Stafford the NHS has still got a long way to go in protecting its patients from error."

 

Meanwhile, Dr Mike Durkin, NHS England's national director of patient safety, claimed that the chances of a patient coming to serious harm or dying while being treated by the NHS were "tiny".

(source: Sunday Express)