Lancashire NHS Trust pays out more than £9m in surgery errors

Lancashire NHS Trust pays out more than £9m in surgery errors
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Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has paid out more than £9m in surgery errors since 2019.

Figures obtained by Medical Negligence Assist found the Trust had to pay out the whopping amount to patients who have lodged claims following a surgery error. The Trust provides services to over 350,000 patients in the Preston area and around the North West.

149 claims regarding surgery errors were made from 2019 to 2024, with 97 of these being settled. In 2019-2020, 40 claims were made against the Trust which is the highest number in the past five years.

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A year later, the number of claims decreased to 30. More recently in the past year there was another rise in claims with a total of 29, compared to 2022-23 which saw 22 claims.

Over the past five years, the Trust has paid out a total of £9,509,605, with the highest amount coming in 2020/21, standing at £2,928,395.

Medical negligence solicitor for JF Law, Gareth Lloyd, said: “The chances of a patient suffering a surgical error are remote, yet every operation carries with it a number of risks, and if something goes wrong, there can be lifelong consequences.”

If someone is affected by surgery errors, they are able to claim against the NHS using NHS Resolution which will pay for their compensation. NHS Resolution is a government scheme paid for by NHS Trusts which acts as an insurance policy, paying for negligence claims.

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Surgery errors are categorised as unexpected mistakes or accidents that occur during procedures and should not have happened in surgery, classified as 'never events'. Errors can have significant physical, emotional and financial consequences for patients involved.

Common errors include foreign objects left in the body, including surgical instruments and cleaning materials. There's also 'wrong site surgery' when patients are put at a greater risk of infection and additional scarring.

According to figures gathered by NHS Resolution, 11,700 claims have been lodged against NHS trusts around the country for surgery errors in the past five years, with 8,753 of these claims being settled. The government department also revealed the most frequent causes of surgery errors as well as the injuries that resulted from them.

Failures and delays for treatment are the most common surgical error complaint, as this was lodged 1,999 times. The most common injury was unnecessary pain, also with 1,990 claims submitted.

12,000 medicolegal claims are brought against the NHS every year, at a cost of £8 billion. This is 6.7% of NHS England's budget and 1,000 of these claims is for general surgery.

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However, this is not the only surgery where errors can occur, they can also happen in neuro, oral and maxillofacial, orthopaedic, plastic, and vascular surgeries.

Speaking to Medical Negligence Assist, Gareth Lloyd said: "Although they appear on the surface to be straightforward cases, surgical errors are much more complex than that and can cover a number of situations and outcomes.

“For example, an operation to remove your gallbladder carries with it risks of damage to the bile duct, blood vessels, bowel and intestines. If one of these complications happens during the operation, nine times out of ten, there is no case, however, that doesn’t mean that there is no case at all, it just makes it more difficult to prove.

“I once had a case involving a patient undergoing a gallbladder removal, and during the operation, one of the veins in his abdomen was damaged, which is a known risk and therefore wasn’t seen as a surgical error.

“However, when I got the medical records, it transpired that the performing surgeon had completely severed the client's hepatic artery, which isn’t a known complication, hence a successful case.”

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