Medical Litigation: Impact on Medical Innovation

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, naturally I share my noble friend’s concern about the level of litigation in the NHS. Having said that, I have seen no evidence that a particularly large or indeed significant element of that bill relates to medical innovation. We need to reflect that all treatments in routine use in the NHS today began as innovative treatments. We continue to support the introduction of new and innovative treatments in the NHS. I think that, if anything, doctors have more concerns about being reported to the General Medical Council than they do about being sued.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, is there not a danger that the requirement to publish the patient mortality rates of individual surgeons will act as a disincentive for surgeons to innovate and take risks in circumstances where patients themselves might want those surgeons to take a risk?

[Earl Howe]

There is indeed a danger that if the information that is published has not been carefully scrutinised to make sure that it is balanced and reflects faithfully the performance of the individual surgeon or the surgical team. I share the noble Lord’s concern that we should not just release information that has not been carefully examined in that sense, but there is a value, I suggest, to patients and clinicians themselves to have benchmarking metrics against which to judge performance.