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Found 141 results
  1. News Article
    Almost 75 years since its foundation, the NHS is struggling with delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the “greatest workforce crisis” in its history. A report from MPs on the health committee this week showed 105,000 vacancies for doctors, nurses and midwives, as thousands quit owing to burnout, bullying, pension rules and low pay. Jeremy Hunt, the committee’s chairman, said that the “persistent understaffing in the NHS poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety”. Lawyers warned that the crisis risked increasing the number of negligence claims. Spending on claims by NHS Resolution rose to £2.5 billion in 2021-22 compared with £2.3 billion in the previous year, according to its annual report published last week. The bill increased despite initiatives to cut the number of cases going to court and foster greater collaboration with claimant lawyers. Claimant lawyers welcomed NHS Resolution’s more collaborative approach and desire to resolve cases sooner. They argued, however, that the defensive culture remained and suggested there should be a greater focus on patient safety and learning from mistakes. John McQuater, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said that NHS Resolution’s denials and delays meant that injured patients had to turn to lawyers to find answers. He said that earlier investigation into patient safety incidents and earlier admissions of liability by NHS trusts would speed up the system, cutting costs and human misery. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 28 July 2022
  2. News Article
    Maternity failings continue to account for the majority of billions of pounds spent by the NHS on clinical negligence claims, as an NHS body warns of the “devastating” consequences of poor care. Two-thirds of the £13bn spent by the NHS in 2021-21 in respect of negligence claims was related to maternity care, according to new data. A report released by NHS Resolution said it was “a stark reminder that although the NHS remains one of the safest healthcare systems in the world within which to give birth, avoidable errors within maternity can have devastating consequences for the child, mother and wider family, as well as the NHS staff involved.” According to the figures, 1,243 maternity-related negligence claims were reported to the NHS in 2021-22, up from 1,571 in the previous year. The data also shows that 200 claims relating to cerebral palsy or brain damage were received in 2021-22 – a decrease from the previous year, in which there were 250. The organisation said that the growth in obstetrics claims over the past three years was due to trusts reporting cases of cerebral palsy and brain damage earlier through its early notification scheme, which was launched in 2017. Read full story Source: The Independent, 24 July 2022
  3. News Article
    A jury ordered Becton, Dickinson and Co to pay $255,000 to a man who sued the company, alleging he had been injured by its hernia repair surgical mesh, according to a court filing. The verdict in Columbus, Ohio federal court comes in the second bellwether trial in a multidistrict litigation over the company's hernia mesh products, which were sold by C.R. Bard Inc before its 2017 acquisition by Becton Dickinson. The first bellwether trial last year ended with a verdict in favour of the company. More than 16,000 cases have been consolidated before Chief U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus in Columbus, in the third-largest pending MDL nationwide. Plaintiffs claim that the mesh products caused infections, pain, inflammation and other problems. The verdict came in a case brought by Antonio Milanesi, who had Bard's Ventralex mesh implanted during a hernia repair in 2007, and his wife, Alicia Morz De Milanesi. They claimed that Milanesi developed an infection and bowel abscess because of the mesh, requiring a second surgery in 2017. Like other plaintiffs in the MDL, the Milanesis say the mesh products are defectively designed because their polypropylene material degrades when in implanted in human tissue. Read full story Source: Reuters, 16 April 2022
  4. Content Article
    Representatives from Mesh Ireland and Mesh Survivors have this week appeared before the Oireachtas Health Committee, where questions were raised about access to vital diagnostic machines and treament for women who have had vaginal mesh implants put in. Vaginal mesh devices were used to treat issues in women after childbirth, or in their later years, and while it’s not known how many procedures were carried out, it’s believed there were more than 10,000 on the public system alone. Women have experienced painful complications as a result of the procedure and Founder of the Mesh Survivors Ireland Campaign, Melanie Power, who’s a solicitor from Meelick, says many women are unable to work and can’t afford the cost of ongoing treatment. She believes questions need to be answered on why women affected by a post-natal procedure which can cause chronic pain are being means tested for the medical card. Listen to the full interview on Clare FM below.
  5. News Article
    Thalidomide survivors living in Scotland will receive lifelong financial support, the Scottish government has announced. Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said he hoped the commitment to provide grants would reassure those affected. There are 50 known survivors of the banned pregnancy drug living in Scotland, most now in their 60s. They are among thousands born with limb deformities after their mothers took thalidomide while pregnant. The drug was commonly used to treat morning sickness from 1958 to 1961. In 2013 the Scottish government committed £14.2m to help survivors over a 10-year period, with the money going on health and living costs. Ministers have now extended that agreement, with grants to be allocated to survivors on a needs basis, as assessed by the Thalidomide Trust. Mr Yousaf said: "This funding is used to give thalidomide survivors as much assistance as they need to maintain their independence. It has been a vital support in helping people adapt their homes and manage their pain. "I hope this lifelong commitment to continue this support will reassure recipients and help them deal with any challenges they face." Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 July 2022
  6. News Article
    Three trusts have lost out on more than £1m in rebate from the maternity clinical negligence scheme (CNST) after they ‘mis-declared’ that they were compliant with safety requirements. University Hospitals Sussex Foundation Trust, University Hospitals Morecambe Bay FT and Doncaster and Bassetlaw FT have all received a small amount of funding to implement their action plans but a much larger rebate on the NHS Resolution maternity section of the clinical negligence scheme for trusts has been withheld. This amounted to a loss of close to half a million pounds for Doncaster and Bassetlaw and is likely to be more for the other two trusts, which had made bigger contributions to the maternity section of the CNST. Western Sussex had mis-declared its compliance on five safety actions, BSUH on seven, Doncaster and Bassetlaw on five and UHMB on seven. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 26 May 2022
  7. News Article
    More than 200 women were harmed when a rogue surgeon carried out operations on them unnecessarily, an NHS inquiry has found. Some of the women were left with life-changing physical problems or unable to work, while many also suffered trauma and serious psychological harm as a result. Overall, 203 women on whom Anthony Dixon performed procedures between 2007 and 2017 came to harm, according to a review by the North Bristol NHS trust (NBT). Dixon, who for years was Britain’s most influential pelvic surgeon, worked for both the trust and the private Spire hospital in the city. In 2017, NBT launched a review of Dixon’s performance and suspended him after dozens of women he had performed procedures on complained that they had experienced appalling consequences, including unmanageable pain and incontinence. The Guardian revealed in late 2017 that 100 women were suing him for medical negligence. Some cases have since been settled, but dozens are ongoing. NBT sacked Dixon in 2019 and he is currently banned from practising in the UK. During the review, 378 women were recalled and asked to set out their dealings with Dixon. All had undergone a procedure called laparoscopic ventral mesh rectopexy (LVMR), in which plastic mesh is inserted to repair weakened tissue in the pelvic floor. In papers presented to NBT’s board on Thursday, board members were told that the inquiry had concluded. “The trust has notified 203 NHS patients that, although their LVMR operation was carried out satisfactorily, they should have been offered alternative treatments before proceeding to surgery. We have defined these patients as suffering ‘harm’ as a result,” it said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 26 May 2022
  8. Event
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    NHS Resolution’s Safety and Learning team, in partnership with the National Infusion and Vascular Access Society (NIVAS), is hosting a virtual forum on extravasation injury claims, learning and guidance. The purpose of this forum is to raise awareness from the extravasation injury claims and to help spread learning and process review across health providers. The format is interactive, with delegate questions and panel discussion. Andrew Barton, Chair of NIVAS and IV nurse consutlant (NIVAS and Frimley NHS Trust) Alison Macefield, Deputy Head of Midwifery (Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust) Jorge Leon-Villapalos, Consultant in Plastic Surgery and Burns (Chelsea & Westminster) Lisa-Marie Musgrave, Senior Claims Manager (NHS Resolution) Samantha Thomas, Associate Safety and Learning Lead London (NHS Resolution) Register
  9. News Article
    Parents whose children have mysteriously fallen ill with hepatitis and received a delayed diagnosis could be entitled to negligence claims, lawyers believe. Officials are no closer to explaining a recent and unusual outbreak in cases of liver inflammation recorded among young children across the UK. To date, a total of 163 children have been diagnosed. Eleven of these have received liver transplants, while 13 are currently in hospital. Globally in recent months, 300 children have been struck down by the illness, which has no clear cause. Because the UK cases have been identified retrospectively, there is potential that doctors and medics may have “missed signs” which would have led to earlier hepatitis diagnoses and treatment, lawyers say. “There are a significant number of these diagnoses which are actually retrospective,” said Jonathan Peacock, a partner at VWV specialising in clinical negligence. “The obvious issue there from a negligence point of view is if you have missed signs, which ought to have led you to a diagnosis of hepatitis earlier, as a result of which it’s gone untreated and the outcome is worse, then potentially you’re negligent. “There’s two stages: was the care diagnosis, treatment, intervention, was that of a reasonable standard? If the answer is no – there was clearly a negligent delay, or a breach of duty of care, then the second question that then arises is has the individual been harmed by that delay?” Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 May 2022
  10. News Article
    Hunt’s radical plan to reform compensation for clinical negligence is “completely unacceptable” says the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which includes some of the kinds of firms that urge people to sue the NHS, soliciting online, in TV ads or posters in waiting rooms. Damages paid by the NHS as a result of medical negligence claims have soared exponentially over the last decade, up from £900m to £2.2bn now. Yet despite horror stories of deaths and life-changing damage in badly run maternity wards, the National Audit Office (NAO) finds no evidence of more injuries, only that the number of claims and sums awarded by courts are shooting up. The NAO found that “the claimant’s legal costs exceeded the damages awarded in 61% of claims settled”. Though the lawyers in the clinical compensation business protest vigorously that they defend patients’ rights, the Hunt committee demolishes any justification for the present system. The report quotes Sir Ian Kennedy QC, the chair of many inquiries and emeritus professor of health law and ethics at University College London, who wrote in 2021 that clinical negligence was an “outdated, arbitrary and scandalously expensive system” with a “stranglehold that lawyers exert over a system that should be putting the interests and needs of patients first”. What injured patients need is an independent authority to conduct a speedy and transparent investigation of what went wrong, with everyone free to speak openly, ending in reasonable compensation and a pledge to prevent anyone else being put at risk by the same error. Peter Walsh, the chief executive of Action Against Medical Accidents, told the committee that litigation was often “a last-gasp attempt to get a sense of justice and to get to the bottom of what has actually happened after people have experienced denial after denial”. Instead of a system of delays and denials that frustrates grieving families and terrorises doctors as lawyers seek to pin personal blame on someone, the committee proposes a system closer to those used in New Zealand and Scandinavia. An independent administrative body would investigate a patient’s case to see if the harm done was avoidable and if so, to fix fair compensation briskly within six months. The priority would be openness and learning from mistakes to protect future patients. Not needing to find a person to blame makes it easier for patients to get compensation – but the payout would be far lower. Some warn this lower burden of proof would encourage a flood of claims, but New Zealand found a similar system ended up halving the sums paid out. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 3 May 2022
  11. Content Article
    In this letter nine charities and patient organisations write to Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, urging him to reconsider plans to impose fixed costs on lower value clinical negligence claims. They argue that the proposals are a threat to both access to justice and patient safety.
  12. Content Article
    In a wide-ranging Report on NHS litigation reform, the Health and Social Care Committee finds the current system for compensating injured patients in England ‘not fit for purpose’ and urges a radically different system to be adopted. Reforms would introduce an administrative scheme which would establish entitlement to compensation on the basis that correct procedures were not followed and the system failed to perform rather than clinical negligence which relies on proving individual fault. The new system would prioritise learning from mistakes and would reduce costs. Currently, litigation offers the only route by which those harmed can access compensation. MPs say in addition to being grossly expensive and adversarial, the existing system encourages individual blame instead of collective learning. This is a House of Commons Committee report, with recommendations to government. The Government has two months to respond.
  13. News Article
    A major reform of the way NHS clinical negligence claims are handled in England is needed, MPs say. The House of Commons' Health and Social Care Committee said the current system was too adversarial, leading to bitter and long legal fights for patients. More than £2bn a year is paid out on claims, but 25% goes to legal fees. An independent body should be set up to adjudicate on cases and the need to prove individual fault should be scrapped, the cross-party group said. Instead, the focus should be whether the system failed, which the MPs believe would create a better culture for learning from mistakes. The committee heard from families who had lost children or whose babies had been left with brain injuries from mistakes made during birth. Parents described how they had to fight for years to get recognition for the harm that had been caused. One woman criticised the "complacent attitude" of the hospital involved, saying they just wanted to put it down to one mistake and carry on as normal. Another woman whose daughter died aged 20 months after errors in her care said she felt lessons had not been learnt despite a settlement in her favour. She said the whole process had left her feeling devastated. The average length of time for these settlements was over 11 years, the committee was told. Read full story Source: BBC News, 27 April 2022
  14. News Article
    A hospital has admitted clinical negligence over maternity care failings that led to the potentially avoidable death of a 10-day-old baby, The Independent has learned. Kingsley Olasupo and his twin sister Princess were born on 8 April 2019 at Royal Bolton Hospital. Kingsley died 10 days later following a catalogue of mistakes, which included failing to screen him for sepsis. Kingsley and his sister were born premature at 35 weeks. Three days later he was admitted to the special care unit due to a low temperature and “poor” feeding. Despite being reviewed by two doctors he was not screened for an infection and not given antibiotics. His condition deteriorated and on 12 April he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and sepsis. Days later scans revealed he had severe brain damage and would not survive. Kingsley’s family said they had been “torn apart” by their son’s death and had pursued the trust to ensure a full independent investigation was carried out and lessons learnt. BFT launched an investigation into Kingsley’s care after Mr Olasupo and Ms Daley raised concerns over their son’s death. According to the trust’s investigation report, seen by The Independent, failings in care included that Kingsley was not screened for sepsis despite several “red flags”. Had this been done he would have been given antibiotics. When midwives first escalated concerns to the neonatal team no physical medical review of Kingsley took place. The investigation also found neonatal staff did not carry out daily reviews, and reviews that were done were incomplete and contained “inaccurate” and “misleading” information. Other failings included: “Ineffective” assessment of Kingsley’s wellbeing on the postnatal ward Poor communication between staff and poor handover processes No consideration was given to the fact Kingsley was not feeding well Inadequate recording of observations. Read full story Source: The Independent, 20 April 2022
  15. Content Article
    NHS Resolution has published a set of three reports which explore clinical issues that contribute to compensation claims within Emergency Departments.
  16. News Article
    The reasons behind the most catastrophic blunders in emergency departments have been laid bare in a NHS Resolution report highlighting some of the biggest pay outs for NHS A&E errors. NHS Resolution conducted a deep dive into compensation claims concerning emergency departments in England, including 16 cases which saw more than £1 million handed out after life-changing or deadly errors. The average “high-value claim” was £2,069,029, with many of them related to spinal cord injuries which, left undetected, can have a life-long impact on patients. The report detailed the case of a woman who suffered permanent neurological damage and now has bladder, bowel and sexual dysfunction symptoms, as well as loss of mobility, after a spinal condition was misdiagnosed as sciatica. The report also looked at 86 deaths which resulted in average pay outs of more than £45,000. After reviewing 220 claims between 2014 and 2018, the authors highlighted a number of “common themes”, including: diagnostic errors, including missing signs a patient was deteriorating a failure to recognise the significance of repeat attendance at A&E delays in care problems with communication, including problems with different hospital departments talking to each other. Read full story Source: In Your Area News, 29 March 2022
  17. Event
    This conference, chaired by Simon Hammond Director of Claims Management NHS Resolution will update clinicians and managers on Clinical Negligence with a particular focus on current issues and the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact on clinical negligence claims. Featuring leading legal experts, and experienced clinicians the event will provide an update on current claims the conference will discuss why patients litigate, and responding to claims including claims regarding Covid-19. There will be an extended masterclass on trends in clinical negligence claims and responding to claims followed by an extended focus on maternity claims, and also claims related to medication error. The conference will close with a case study on the advantages of bringing together complaints, claims and patients safety investigation, and practical experiences of Coronavirus complaints at claims at an NHS Trust – including understanding the standard of care on which services should be judged, and a final session on supporting clinicians when a claim is made against them. For further information and to book your place visit: https://www.healthcareconferencesuk.co.uk/conferences-masterclasses/clinical-negligence or email nicki@hc-uk.org.uk We are delighted to offer 3 free places for hub members. Email info@pslhub.org for the discount code. Follow on Twitter @HCUK_Clare #clinicalnegligence
  18. Content Article
    Sharon Hartles is a critical criminologist and member of the Open University’s Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative. In this blog, Sharon reflects on events that have unfolded since the publication of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review 'First Do No Harm' report and the Government's response to it. She examines ongoing failures in the government's response and fulfilment of their policy recommendations. Related reading Primodos, mesh and sodium valproate: Recommendations and the UK Government’s response (Sharon Hartles, August 2021) Primodos: The next steps towards justice (November 2020) Mesh: Denial, half-truths and the harms (March 2021) Sodium Valproate: The Fetal Valproate Syndrome Tragedy
  19. News Article
    More than 200 women were affected by failures in Ireland’s CervicalCheck screening system. It emerged in 2018 that 221 women and families were not told about misreported smear tests. The Minister for Health said that non-disclosure issues which arose in the cervical check screening controversy will be legislated for to prevent it from happening again. Stephen Donnelly said new legislation will address the negligence issues and ensure that the failure to inform the women of the clinical audit of their screening will “never happen again”. Mr Donnelly was discussing a number of amendments at the committee stage of Ireland's Patient Safety Bill. The new legislation will require the mandatory open disclosure of serious patient safety incidents, and sets out a list of incidents which must be reported to the health watchdog, Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA). Mr Donnelly said that he will introduce an amendment at the report stage of the Bill that will provide for non-disclosure and will deal with issues around delayed diagnosis and delayed screening. Mr Donnelly said: “I’ve had lengthy discussions with the department on this and it doesn’t fit neatly with this Bill because the serious patient safety issues which result in death or serious harm, they are very clear and binary. “Legislating around delayed diagnosis and delayed screening, it is really complex and doesn’t fit neatly in this Bill, however my view is that the non-disclosure that happened in cervical check, even though it doesn’t neatly fit here, should still be legislated for." Read full story Source: The Independent, 11 March 2022
  20. Content Article
    This article details the case and findings of an investigation by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) into the death of Stephen Durkin. Stephen died after suffering organ failure from sepsis, while under the care of Wye Valley NHS Trust. His wife, Michelle Durkin, subsequently made a complaint that delays in the diagnosis and treatment of sepsis led to her husband’s death.
  21. News Article
    More than a dozen families are seeking compensation following "significant failures" at NHS Lothian's hearing service for children. The health board apologised to more than 155 families after an independent investigation found serious problems diagnosing and treating hearing loss. Sophie was born partly deaf and failed repeated hearing tests for years. Her family say no help was offered by the paediatric audiology department at NHS Lothian who kept saying she would be fine. But her parents say she is not. Sophie is now seven. Her speech and language has not developed fully and is sometimes hard to understand. Her confidence has been affected. Her mum Sarah said: "They failed Sophie. You kind of trust what they were doing, you thought maybe she doesn't need hearing aids, maybe she will just catch up and now she's almost eight years old and she's still not caught up and you think 'OK, maybe there were mistakes made then'." An independent investigation by the British Academy of Audiology (BAA), published in December last year, found "significant failures" involving 155 children over nine years at NHS Lothian. Several profoundly deaf children were diagnosed too late for vital implant surgery. The health board has "apologised sincerely" to those affected. The BAA looked at more than 1,000 patient records finding "significant failures" in almost 14% of them. The BAA said it found "no evidence" that national guidelines and protocols on hearing tests for children had been followed or consistently applied "at any point since 2009". Read full story Source: BBC News, 2 March 2022
  22. News Article
    Patient safety will be harmed and victims of medical negligence denied justice because of flaws in the government’s health and care bill, the NHS ombudsman has told the Guardian. Rob Behrens, the parliamentary and health service ombudsman, fears he and his staff will not be able to get to the bottom of clinical blunders because under the bill he will be denied potentially vital information collected by the NHS’s Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB). The ombudsman said the legislation would allow the HSIB to “operate behind a curtain of secrecy” and undermine his own investigations into lapses in patient safety and could deny grieving families the full truth about why a loved one died. Behrens has spoken out because he is concerned about government plans for NHS staff involved in an incident to give evidence about mistakes privately in a “safe space” to the HSIB, which cannot be shared with anyone else except coroners. His exclusion from seeing material gathered in that way could force him to take the agency to the high court to access it, he said. “If the ‘safe space’ provisions become law as drafted there is a real risk to patient safety and to justice for those who deserve it. This is a crisis of accountability and scrutiny,” he said. Julia Neuberger, a crossbench peer who chairs University College hospitals NHS trust, has tabled an amendment to the bill in the House of Lords seeking to give the ombudsman access to information obtained via “safe space” processes. Unless ministers rethink the plan “there could be serious consequences for members of the public who use the ombudsman service”, she recently told a Lords debate. “If the ombudsman is unable to investigate robustly all aspects of complaints about the NHS, except with the permission of the high court, patients may find it harder to get access to justice. The NHS may well become less accountable for its system failings,” she said. Peter Walsh, chief executive of patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents, backed Behrens. “The so-called safe space is a red herring with serious unintended consequences. There is no evidence staff do not take part in investigations for fear of information being known. It is bullying employers and over-zealous regulators that staff fear. Denying people their right to have the ombudsman investigate properly does nothing to address that.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 February 2022
  23. Content Article
    Diagnosis lies at the heart of the medical encounter, yet it has received much less attention than treatment. It is widely assumed that negligent diagnosis claims should be governed by the Bolam test, but in this paper, Liddell et al. demonstrate that this is not always the case.
  24. News Article
    Those harmed by the NHS will “have to pay again by losing access to justice” as a result of government plans to introduce fixed costs, campaigners have claimed. The Department of Health & Social Care has published long-awaited proposals for fixed recoverable costs for fast-track cases, and significantly chose to set the fees at levels recommended by defendant representatives, rather than higher ones proposed by the claimant side. Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), noted that the government consulted on similar proposals in 2017 and received a thumbs down from the majority of respondents. He said: “It is shocking that the government is still pushing to bring in these illogical and potentially unfair proposals rather than looking at the root causes of high costs and addressing them… “The government seems to have ignored the fact that the likely effect of these proposals would be that many people whose lives have been devastated by perfectly avoidable, negligent treatment will not be able to challenge denials or get access to justice. “In effect, the very people that the NHS has harmed through lapses in patient safety will have to pay again by losing access to justice. If lawyers are unable to claim for time they spend overcoming denials of liability, injured people will not be able to get legal representation.” Mr Walsh argued that the best way to save the NHS money was to improve patient safety to prevent these incidents in the first place, “and when mistakes do happen investigate them properly and make early, fair and appropriate offers of compensation without costly litigation”. Read full story Source: Legal Futures, 1 February 2022
  25. News Article
    Lawyers’ fees for clinical negligence claims against the NHS could be capped under proposals being considered by ministers. Launching a consultation, the government said “tackling increasing and disproportionate legal fees” for cases worth less than £25,000 would protect NHS funding. The Department of Health said claimants’ legal costs for “lower value claims” were “currently more than four times higher on average” than the NHS’s legal costs in defending the claims. It cited a case in which lawyers claimed £72,000 in legal costs when the patient was awarded £3,000. Patient Safety Minister Maria Caulfield said: “I’m committed to making the NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. When harm does occur, it’s essential the NHS learns from what went wrong, and people who have been negligently harmed are entitled to claim compensation. “Unfortunately, we are seeing some law firms profiting at the NHS’ expense through legal costs that far outweigh the actual compensation awarded to patients. This diverts resources from the NHS frontline as staff work hard to tackle the COVID-19 backlogs. “Our proposals will cap legal costs for lower value claims to ensure they are fair and proportionate, and ensure patients’ claims are resolved as swiftly as possible without reducing the compensation they deserve.” A spokesman for Thompson’s Solicitors, which acts for patients in such claims, told iNews: “Costs already have to be reasonable, proportionate and necessary in order to be recoverable. The answer is for the NHS to admit fault quicker and not cause cases to drag on for years." Read full story Source: iNews, 31 January 2022
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