MEDICAL blunders in maternity care and childbirth are among the cases that led to almost £30m being paid out by the health service last year to settle negligence claims.
The Department of Health has published its annual statistics which show that a total of £21.2m was paid out in compensation to patients for 2018/19, with an additional £5.8m going towards victims' legal teams and a further £2.1m paid to health service lawyers.
More than half of cases 'open' last year related to four main specialties - obstetrics, A&E, general surgery and trauma and orthopaedics.
The department bulletin reveals there has been a £12m decrease in payments for 'clinical and social care negligence' across the north over the past five years - from £41.4 million in 2014/15 to £29.2 million last year.
Other findings include:
- On average, 1.9 years pass between the alleged incident taking place and a case being opened
- Of the 2,995 cases that remained open at March 31 2019, almost two-thirds (1,866) had been open for less than three years, whilst 71 (2.4%) had been open for a decade or more
- The largest average payouts by "nature of incident" relate to pregnancy and childbirth cases, with a average payment of £500,000.
- The Belfast health trust paid out the largest amount in compensation and legal costs (£49.7m) on cases which were open in 2018/19, equating to more than a third of all monies paid
Earlier this year, an audit office report revealed that costs linked to medical negligence claims have risen by 56 per cent since 2012.
It is costing the health service more than £215,000 every day on average - with some cases dragging on for more than 15 years without being settled.
A total of 349 Serious Adverse Incidents (SAIs) were also recorded last year. And the number of complaints received across the health and social care (HSC) sector has increased by 24 per cent since 2012.
The report states that in the five years to April 2017, the total cost of settling clinical negligence claims, plus the estimated costs of unsettled cases, totalled over £393.5m.
