Report Highlights Concerns of Hospital Negligence Claims Lawyers
Hospital negligence claims lawyers have expressed their concerns after seeing a very negative new report concerning levels of safety alert compliance across the NHS. Statistics which formed part of a freedom of information request on behalf of patients’ charity AvMA showed that a significant amount of health care trusts have been failing to comply with orders from an NHS regulatory body. The concerns of patient charities and hospital negligence claims solicitors are that failure to comply could result in injury or even death to patients.
Unfortunately, the information which was compiled for the report seems to suggest that safety alerts have been regularly neglected in some hospitals and trusts. In extreme cases, the statistics showed that in some hospitals, there was failure to comply with as many as 23 of 57 alerts over a five year period.
Hospital negligence claims solicitors and patient charities say that what is most unfortunate is that a similar report in February showed similarly damning results. It appears that NHS organisations have by and large failed to increase compliance with safety warnings.
The seriousness of this problem cannot be emphasised enough. Failing to comply with alerts intended to improve the safety of all NHS practice has serious consequences. Every year many patients are injured or killed as they fall victim to negligent treatment. And of course, injured patients and their families are not happy to find that similar mistakes are not being prevented.
With the possible increase of injured patients comes the potential for major rises in the numbers of hospital negligence claims being made against the NHS. Although the NHS itself recognises that it is vital to pay compensation to injured patients and their families, there are worries that the costs associated with settling hospital negligence claims could divert much needed funds away from NHS. Of course, the only way the problem will be solved is to guarantee compliance and reduce the injuries to patients caused by negligence.