Accidents on maternity wards cost NHS £1 billion per year

The former health secretary Jeremy Hunt revealed that accidents on maternity wards cost the NHS nearly £1 billion in 2019.

 

The chairman of the Commons Health Committee said the bill for maternity legal action was near twice the amount spent on maternity doctors in England. It was up £137 million on the previous year which accounted for almost 50 per cent of the NHS's £2.4 billion total legal fees and compensation bill.

 

Mr Hunt highlighted "appalling high" figures which showed that up to 150 lives are being lost needlessly every week in public hospitals. He told the Daily Mail that there is evidence that hospitals are failing to provide details of avoidable deaths despite being ordered to do so three years ago.

 

In 2017 he told Trusts to publish data on the number of avoidable deaths among patients in their care. However, freedom of information responses from 59 hospital trusts, about half the total, found that less than a quarter gave substantial data on avoidable deaths.

 

Responding to the figures Mr Hunt said,  "Something has gone badly wrong." He blamed lawyers who get involved "almost immediately" once something goes wrong with a patient's care and cited "major cultural challenges" which he blamed for preventing doctors and nurses from accepting any blame.

 

He said, "Doctors, nurses and midwives worry they could lose their licence if they are found to have made a mistake. Hospital managers worry about the reputation of their organisation. We have appallingly high levels of avoidable harm and death in our healthcare system. We seem to just accept it as inevitable." Mr Hunt said.  

 

A spokesman for the NHS said, "Delivering the safest possible health service for patients is a priority, and the national policy on learning from deaths is clear that hospitals must publish this information every three months, as well as an annual summary, so that they are clear about any problems that have been identified and how they are being addressed."

 

Whitestone Solicitors

Rochdale