Patients who have suffered as a result of healthcare treatment could be compensated without having to take the NHS to court under plans to reform the system.
The Scottish government has accepted the recommendations of a review group headed by renowned law and medical ethics expert Sheila McLean, which says the current adversarial court system should be changed to one of no-fault compensation.
This would mean that patients would still have to prove that they suffered loss, injury or damage as a result of healthcare treatment, but would not have to prove that negligence was involved.
Doctors said the proposed changes would benefit patients and mean an end to “defensive medicine”.
The review group said that the proposed system would cost around the same as the NHS currently plays in compensation and legal fees, but would benefit more people, who would receive fair and adequate compensation for harm suffered in a more timely way.
Wider benefits would include greater scope for the NHS to learn from mistakes so that care could be improved, and more efficient use of time and money, the review group said.
The move was welcomed by doctors’ leaders. BMA Scottish secretary Martin Woodrow said: “Over the past decade we have seen an increase in cost of clinical negligence claims against the NHS. The BMA has been advocating a system that avoids the blame culture and but still enables patients to make complaints and receive compensation.
“The BMA believes that no-fault compensation offers a less adversarial system of resolving the process for compensating patients for clinical errors. A system of no fault compensation with maximum financial limits would benefit both doctors and patients, speeding up the process and reducing the legal expenses incurred by the current system. More importantly, however, it would address the blame culture within the NHS which discourages doctors from reporting accidents and would end the practice of defensive medicine.”
Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon said it was in nobody’s interests to have precious NHS resources spent on expensive legal fees, nor to have redress delayed because a compensation claim can take years to go through the courts.
No-fault compensation would be a sensible way to ensure people who have been affected are compensated without tying up either patients or the health service in years of litigation. The next step now is to investigate thoroughly how such a scheme would work in practice – including further analysis of any cost implications – both for the benefit of individual patients and the good of the health service as a whole.”
Professor McLean said: “It is important that the aim of any compensation scheme should be to facilitate access to justice, provide appropriate compensation for injured patients and ensure proper and timely adjudication of claims.
“The members of the review group were clear that the current system is not meeting the needs of patients, and will welcome the Scottish Government announcement.”
Read the Scottish Government no fault compensation review group here
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