Hospital Negligence

Time constraints for medical negligence claims

Generally, a claim must be started within three years from when the negligent event occurred, or the date of when you initially discovered you had suffered harm or injury (there are exceptions to this rule). If the case involves children, then there are no time limits imposed on a claim until they reach 18. Additionally, a person who is deemed to be lacking the mental capacity required to claim by themselves will not be subject to time limits. Medical Negligence is a legal term where a medical professional fails to uphold their standard of care towards a patient which results in injury or harm to them. Matters can arise from errors such as poor management of staff (using untrained agency workers etc), a poor treatment plan or a diagnosis that results in you being prescribed the wrong medication.

 

Who is liable?

In Cassidy v Ministry of Health, courts made it clear that authorities who run a hospital, whether local or government boards or corporations are in law under the same duty of care as any other healthcare professional. It was also emphasised that reasonable care and skill must be exercised when treating patients, and if the staff they employ are negligent, then the employer is just as negligent as the staff hired. It is unlikely that individual hospital healthcare professionals will be subject to a legal claim, as these are typically made against the hospital as the professional’s vicariously liable employer.

 

How we can help

One of the issues with diagnosis is that the NHS staff only have a limited amount of time to see you and have to diagnose your situation with the symptoms that present themselves, these can lead to a rushed diagnosis to meet their workload, however this does not excuse them form their duty of care towards you. If there has been a clear error then we would suggest that we commission a review by a consultant specialist to review their work. If they feel that there has been an error then we would forward this information to you and take your instructions. These consultants are privately contracted by us (and therefore their cost would be classed as a disbursement). To quantify the potential claim in regard to mental trauma we would suggest an additional report from our psychological team. We would hope that the other side would agree with our experts’ findings without any further costs or investigations and agree to a series of interim payments followed by a final settlement.

 

The claim will consider two types of damages:

• General damages- this compensates the victim for the pain and suffering endured, and for the loss of enjoyment of life as a result of the negligent act.
• Special damages- this compensates the victim for any personal costs incurred as a result of the negligent act. It can also cover any additional costs required in the future such as remedial surgery to remedy the mistake, mental suffering and so on.

 

To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by taking advantage of our free consultation service, activated by the link at the top of the page, should you wish to start a case the caseworker will send you the suitable payment link. Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our legal team and medical consultant and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.