NHS: Negligence

(asked on 3rd February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps NHS Resolve has taken since 2017 to tackle the increase in clinical negligence liability.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 11th February 2020

The rising costs of clinical negligence are a major concern and something we are committed to tackling, given that National Health Service funds spent on clinical negligence are resources not available for front-line care.

NHS Resolution manages clinical negligence and other claims against the NHS in England. NHS Resolution launched a new five-year strategy in 2017 aimed at delivering fair resolution and learning from harm to improve safety, following which it has:

- Launched an Early Notification scheme for the most serious obstetric incidents to get closer to the point of incident so that they can get support to families when they need it and share learning more rapidly;

- Introduced the Maternity Incentive Scheme which encourages improvement in maternity and neonatal services by incentivising a bundle of safety actions informed by research and agreed with system partners;

- Increased the use of mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution to resolve claims without the need for expensive litigation; and

- Refined their approach to learning from claims to drive safety improvement.

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