Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what analysis they have made of the potential use of alternative dispute resolution schemes in lieu of current clinical litigation procedures.
Alternative dispute resolution takes various forms. The NHS Litigation Authority (NHS LA) has looked at a number of these and recently piloted a mediation programme for clinical negligence cases. As analysed the results have been very positive (81% of mediations in the pilot resulted in settlements) and as a result, NHS LA will be developing a formal mediation scheme.