NHS legal bills rising
The Chief Medical Officer has published a paper today on possible ways to cut the NHS’s legal bills.
Legal costs for the NHS have skyrocketed in recent years as people have become more likely to sue for compensation in cases of possible negligence, and the cost of compensation has been mirrored in a rise in legal costs as well.
In the 2001/2 year the amount paid out in compensation rose more than ten fold on the previous year to over £400million, and around £5billion in outstanding claims were still on the books at the end of the period.
The Chief Medical Officer also noted that the average duration for a case is more than five years, and that nearly 10% of cases last ten years. This pushes up the legal costs of fighting the claims, and is not recovered if the case is a success.
With many cases costing more to fight than the value of the compensation claim, and with an estimated 8% of NHS funding going towards legal costs, a series of proposals have been put forward to help reduce the bill. These include training staff to boost communications on issues of complaints, and a redress.
Such a scheme is in place in some other countries and involves the use of a series of set compensation levels for different errors or mistakes. This may reduce the need for long court cases, although it is also believed to have pushed up the compensation bill where it has been bought in.
