According to recently released personal injury compensation figures, hospitals located in the North East have had to pay more than £22m in compensation from medical negligence cases in just one 12-month period.
Patients victimised by surgical blunders and hospital errors in the region have been keeping medical negligence solicitors busy, successfully pursuing more than £22.3 million in damages. The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which is the largest NHS Trust in the area, was found to have paid out the most in compensation with a total of more than £7.11 million in combined payments.
The NHS Foundation Trusts for the City Hospitals Sunderland and Northumbria Healthcare came in second and third for large combined payouts. The former was found to have made more than £4 million in combined payments, while the latter had doled out £3.5 million in total.
Durham City native Christina Malcolm, aged forty three, was one of the region’s many victims of medical negligence. Ms Malcolm was left in need of round the clock care after both her doctor and hospital staff neglected to properly detect and diagnose her haemorrhage.
Her resultant injuries were so serious that the likelihood of her ever returning to work is extremely low. The NHS Trust for her hospital paid her a total of £4 million in injury compensation as a result.
One spokesperson for NHS North East remarked that the health service’s first priority was to make sure that both staff and patients in the region were kept safe. The spokesperson additionally said that those patients who had not received the suitable and expected standard of care should indeed be awarded compensatory damages.