The NHS has a well-deserved reputation for delivering one of the safest healthcare systems in the world. However, on rare occasions, things go wrong. When this happens, it’s important that those involved are properly informed and supported, compensation is paid fairly, unnecessary costs are contained and that we learn in order to improve and prevent the same thing from happening again.
Negligence comes at significant personal and financial cost for the NHS, not all of which is visible.
Claims for compensation arise for a variety of reasons, such as clinical errors, employee injuries and accidents on NHS premises. Besides the financial cost, the personal cost to individual healthcare staff involved in an incident can be significant. Our range of indemnity schemes aim to minimise unnecessary costs associated with negligence claims. This protects patients by preserving funds for care and reduces the immense stress placed on NHS staff by lengthy legal proceedings.
In a similar fashion, our Practitioner Performance Advice service protects patients and public funds by managing concerns about practicing clinicians without wasteful and unnecessary exclusions and suspensions.
Our Primary Care Appeals service removes the need for lengthy and expensive contractual disputes between primary care contractors and NHS England, delivering fair and independent dispute resolution.
And our Safety and Learning team works closely with NHS care providers to identify and target areas for improvement and ensure that learning is shared and implemented to improve safety standards across patient care.