THE health service has blown nearly £4billion on successful compensation claims – averaging over £200k per victim – as we reveal which NHS Trusts are the worst culprits.
The biggest payouts came from Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, who dolled out £97,996,384 to 356 patients, which included 122 cases where diagnosis or treatment was delayed and 39 fatalities.
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A Freedom of Information request disclosed that in the financial years of 2019/20 and 2020/21 there were 17,715 claims against the NHS, which resulted in damages, and a total payout of £3,832,869,868.
This equates to one an hour over the course of the two years and the average payout was £216,362.
London was the biggest region to be hit with damage claims, with the capital’s hospitals having to pay around £670 million for its gross errors.
Barts Health NHS Trust was the nation’s second worst performer, paying out £67,176,416 to 210 victims of blunders, which resulted in 31 deaths, nine operations with defective tools, and five people were left with foreign parts in their body.
Barts was embroiled with Archie Battersbee’s parents. Archie, 12-year-old, died last week after nearly 4 months in a coma. He was later diagnosed brain dead.
In third spot in the league of shame is Nottingham University Hospitals, which was forced to hand out £62,916,235 to 270 victims including 33 deaths and six people who’d been assaulted.
In fourth was Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, which had to shell out £61.6m to 127 patients, of which, 12 died and five were left brain damaged.
The Department of Health itself was one of the worst offenders, in fifth, handing out £61.4m in compensation to 202 patients, including six fatalities and 49 who suffered injuries to their internal organs.
The University Hospitals of Derby & Burton NHS Foundation Trust, Penine Acute Hospitals, University Hospitals of Leicester, University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, and Portsmouth Hospitals were the other top ten most serious offenders.
All of them shelled out more than £52 million to a combined 1,115 patients, which resulted in 92 deaths.