Hospital negligence claims

Hospital negligence claims can describe a wide variety of medical negligence claims arising from injuries to patients caused by negligent hospital care.

NHS trusts are responsible for the care provided to patients in a range of inpatient and outpatient hospital settings, such as maternity and neonatal departments, surgery and anaesthesia, cardiology, cancer and other specialist areas of medicine, as well as radiology (for x-rays and scans), pharmacy or acute treatment in accident and emergency. Hospitals are also responsible for system errors, such as administrative and communication failures, shortages of scanners and faulty equipment, which result in injury to patients during hospital care.

If negligence by one or more NHS hospital staff or systems has caused injury to a patient, the claim is made against the NHS organisation that employs the staff and manages the systems. The NHS’ defence organisation, NHS Resolution, will then respond by defending or admitting liability, and ultimately settling the claim.

Whether a patient receives treatment in an NHS or private hospital, they are entitled to expect a safe and acceptable standard of care.

Hospital negligence claims can be made for serious injuries caused by medical negligence in private hospitals, but care must be taken to ensure that the claim is made against the correct defendants. Unlike NHS hospital negligence claims, if a patient has been injured by negligent medical care in a private hospital, the consultant doctors or surgeons who were negligent will usually be self-employed, which means that the private hospital will not be responsible for claims arising from their mistakes. Each negligent doctor must be named as a defendant to the claim but will be represented and insured by their own defence organisation, which will pay any compensation that is ordered by the court or agreed in an out-of-court settlement.

The private hospital may also be responsible for any harm that was caused by their employees, facilities or equipment.

Good hospital care relies on many factors, including decisions by individual clinicians, communication and effective working relationships between healthcare teams, adequate resources and effective systems to protect patient safety. When mistakes by individuals, teams or involving the hospital’s systems and equipment cause serious harm to the patient, they may be entitled to claim compensation for their injury.

Hospital negligence claims often involve injury caused by one or more of the following mistakes:

• delayed diagnosis and treatment of medical emergencies;
• discharging a patient who needs admission, treatment, tests or a scan;
• failing to examine the patient, take a full medical history or note the patient’s symptoms;
• failing to carry out or misinterpreting investigations, blood tests, scans;
• observation and monitoring errors;
• delayed escalation or failing to seek senior or specialist review;
• communication, appointment booking and follow-up errors;
• surgical, anaesthetic and post-operative errors;
• maternity (antenatal, perinatal and post-natal) or neonatal care errors;
• delaying or failing to recognise and treat infection;
• medication or prescribing errors.

As specialist medical negligence solicitors, we have decades of experience in helping clients claim compensation for injuries caused by hospital negligence. We have secured life-changing compensation settlements for clients and their bereaved families after negligent hospital care resulted in catastrophic injury and severe disability, including:

• cerebral palsy, birth injury and maternal injury or death in childbirth;
• neonatal brain injury;
• brain injury from meningitis , sepsis and HSV infection, haemorrhage or stroke;
• disability from cauda equina syndrome (CES) and spinal cord injury (SCI);
• physical and psychological injury from delayed cancer treatment;
• amputation;
• injury to major organs (heart, brain, kidney, liver, lungs, bowel);
• severe injury from anaesthetic negligence and anaphylaxis;
• fatal injury.