Why Hospital Negligence Claims Solicitors Are Concerned
Thursday, August 19th, 2010Hospital 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.
The information obtained for the report shows that in many hospitals and trusts, safety alerts from the National Patient Safety Agency have been routinely ignored. In some cases figures showed that some hospitals failed to comply with as many as 23 of 57 alerts issued in five years.
It is particularly unfortunate, say hospital negligence claims lawyers and patient charity AvMA that this report follows a similar investigation in February with similarly damning results. By all accounts, compliance has not improved since the previous report.
One cannot overemphasise the seriousness of the problem. Neglecting to comply with alerts intended to boost safety has serious consequences. Negligent treatment injures and even kills many patients every year. And of course, previously injured patients and their families are not impressed at the revelation that lessons are not being learnt from their ordeals.
Of course, with the potential for higher numbers of injured patients, there is the added potential for more hospital negligence claims being made against the NHS. Whilst even the NHS itself accepts the importance of compensating victims of negligent care so that they can return to as normal a life as possible, there are concerns that paying hospital negligence claims diverts funds away from the NHS. Of course, the only solution is to increase compliance with safety rules and reduce the number of patients injured and even killed through medical negligence.
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