Harrogate NHS Trust paid out £400k bill for damages in negligence claims
Harrogate & District NHS Foundation Trust has paid out more than £400,000 in damages for gynaecology medical negligence claims lodged against it in the last five years, new figures show.
Data obtained by Medical Negligence Assist has revealed that the Trust, which runs Harrogate District Hospital, has had 14 claims and incidents of gynaecology-related medical negligence reported to NHS Resolution, the legal arm of the NHS, since 2019.
Medical Negligence Assist investigated the number of medical negligence claims that have been lodged against NHS Trusts in the last five years.
It revealed that since 2019, the Harrogate Trust has settled a total of six gynaecology negligence claims lodged against it with damages amounting to £415,178.
Talking to the Harrogate Advertiser, a spokesperson for Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust said: "We aim to provide the highest standards of care for our patients. Patient safety is our priority.
"On the rare occasions that these high standards are not met, we are determined to learn from those instances so that we can prevent them from occurring again in the future.”
The findings about Harrogate come amid a damning new national report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) which revealed that women are being left in ‘debilitating’ pain for years with more than 760,0000 on the waiting list for appointments due to a gynaecology care ‘crisis.’
In it, experts are calling for extra funding to speed up treatment for the more than three-quarters of a million women currently on waiting lists.
With stretched services, struggling staff and dwindling resources, it is almost inevitable that standards of care will suffer.
The RCOG report adds: “Gynaecology has historically been perceived as less important in wider elective recovery, and this has resulted in an increasing number of complex cases, disease progression, emergency admissions and women living in pain and distress: all of which are preventable.”
Medical Negligence Assist’s data revealed that, nationally, 3,739 gynaecology medical negligence claims and incidents have been reported to NHS Resolution since 2019.
Of those, 1,337 claims were made by women or on behalf of women for ‘unnecessary pain’ as well 740 for ‘additional or unnecessary operations.’
Medical Negligence Assist offers specialist advice on negligence claims with a 24-hour helpline and live chat service.