Middlesbrough, UK – 30th November, 2016: One Teesside family whose baby suffered a severe injury at birth is still waiting for a clinical negligence claim from the NHS - 18 years after the event.
It’s the second longest anyone in the country has had to wait for this type of claim to be settled under the Clinical Negligence Scheme for trusts, which deals with incidents that have occurred since April 1995.
It’s unclear how much the parents will be compensated in the end, as the claim is as yet unresolved. Details of this specific case were not disclosed in order to protect the family’s privacy, but the mistake was made at the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation trust.
In some cases, the extent of the injuries may not become fully apparent for several years until the child is older, leading to claims taking so long to be settled. The NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) will usually make interim payments to ensure that the immediate needs of the child are being met.
Deepak Dwarakanath, Medical Director at North Tees, said: “Claims are managed by the NHSLA on our behalf and their focus is on bringing resolution as quickly as possible to support families.
“Some birth injury claims may not be received for many years and can be extremely complex. Payments/settlements for birth injuries generally have a lump sum payment followed by annual periodical payments over the life of the child. Once settled those cases with periodical payments are not closed down by the NHSLA until all payments are completed, which is why they continue to appear on the information shared.”
North Tees, which runs health services in Stockton , has another unsettled claim, which has been open for more than 16 years. In 2015-16, the North Tees trust paid a total of £2.5 million for defence and claimant costs, along with £7.3 million in damages. The most money that the trust has ever awarded in damages for a single maternity case under the Clinical Negligence Scheme was £9 million.
The figures, which were exclusively obtained by The Gazette, show that the longest unsettled claim for the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs health services in Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland , was more than 12 years.
A spokeswoman for South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “We treat all claims as an opportunity to learn and to improve further the safety and quality of care of our patients.
“When things go wrong, as regrettably they can do in all healthcare settings, our first responsibility is to the families and babies affected but also to ensure that we look at what went wrong, why it went wrong and how we can learn lessons from it to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The Trust contributes to the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) so compensation can be paid where appropriate. The intention of the NHSLA clinical negligence scheme for trusts is to balance out the effect of claims over a number of years so that in years when more claims settle than average it will not adversely impact the trust’s budget.”
Source: http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/family-teesside-baby-injured-birth-12257686