Justine Sutton argues that focusing on patient safety rather than capping claims would result in greater costs savings for the NHS
At the time of writing, we are drawing near to the end of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) consultation on fixed recoverable costs for lower value clinical negligence claims (24 April 2022). Therefore, it is clear to us, our clients and other clinical negligence lawyers that more attention is needed to the patient safety issues that allow preventable injuries and damage, rather than concentrating on the level of legal costs paid when patients seek compensation for the consequences of the mistakes that have caused avoidable harm.
In the decades that we have worked with clients who have been let down by an otherwise trusted group of health professionals, the repeated refrain that we hear from our clients, is that they ...
“a client spent months advising doctors, nurses and midwives that she was concerned that something had been left inside her during a Cesarean procedure.”
