NHS England has spent £4.1 billion over 11 years settling legal cases over brain-damaged babies
The NHS has spent £4.1 billion over the past 11 years settling lawsuits involving babies who suffered brain damage at birth, amid claims that maternity units fail to learn from mistakes.
NHS paid just under £3.6 billion in compensation in 1,307 cases where parents had to care for a baby with cerebral palsy or other forms of brain injury, NHS figures show.
NHS Resolution, which defends hospitals in England accused of medical negligence, has spent a further £490 million on legal costs, bringing the total cost of dealing with the legal actions to £4.1 billion.
“These figures are shocking and also a tragedy. They should be raising alarm bells across the NHS,” said Robert Rose of Lime Solicitors, which obtained the data under freedom of information laws.
“These mistakes in maternity care keep happening. We are stuck in a cycle of repeating these types of mistakes – a perpetual cycle of negligence. It is a scandal that lessons are not being learned (by hospitals),” he added.
A single case where a baby suffers brain damage, often because oxygen was not used during delivery, can cost the NHS up to £20 million to settle due to the high cost of caring for a child who has particularly high needs throughout their life. has.
In such cases, newborns often develop severe cognitive and physical impairments, including jerky movements and an inability to see, speak and learn normally.
The £4.1 billion bill for the 1,307 brain damaged babies is further evidence of the growing crisis of poor care provided in many NHS birthing services. According to the Care Quality Commission, the independent healthcare regulator, almost two-thirds of maternity units in England are unsafe. Maternity care in general is getting worse, the CQC has warned.
A hard-hitting parliamentary report earlier this month exposed the extent of birth trauma mothers suffer when something goes wrong and they, their baby or both end up damaged. MPs demanded urgent measures to make healthcare safer, including an end to the staff shortage.
The data shows that between 2012-2013 and 2022-2023, ten NHS trusts, mainly those running one or more large acute hospitals, each dealt with at least 20 cases of negligence involving cerebral palsy or brain damage. Barts Health Trust in London settled 36 – the most – for a sum of £32.6 million. Many of the births took place years before they were settled, as it can take years for NHS Resolution and families to reach an agreement.
The number of claims processed by a trust is not necessarily reflective of the quality of care it provides, as trusts serve populations of different sizes and demographic profiles.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which is at the center of an investigation into alleged maternity care failures harming mothers and babies, settled 16 cases for £44.8 million.
Three other trusts also at the center of pregnancy scandals in recent years – Morecambe Bay, East Kent and Shrewsbury and Telford – settled 14, 12 and 11 cases for amounts of £36.3 million, £27.4 million and £16 respectively, 7 million. .
Rose, head of clinical negligence at Lime Solicitors, said common mistakes made by maternity staff include failure to properly monitor the baby’s growth during pregnancy and inadequate monitoring of the baby’s heart rate during delivery are.
The NHS appears to have abandoned an initiative it launched years ago to immediately investigate problem births and then tell parents, he said. Instead, legal action could take up to nine years to reach a conclusion despite evidence of wrongdoing, he added.
NHS Resolution also settled 933 lawsuits relating to stillbirth for a sum of £93 million, it announced in its freedom of information response.
Last month, three out of four midwives who responded to a Royal College of Midwives survey said their workplace was not safely staffed for a week in early March.
Paul Whiteing, the chief executive of patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents, said: “The scale of the damage and associated costs is devastating and confirms what we are seeing and hearing from distressed parents dealing with the consequences of a brain damage. baby and wants answers from the NHS about how that tragedy happened.
“Maternity care is in a poor state as evidenced by the total number of maternity services assessed as inadequate by the CQC through their inspection programme.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said it could not comment due to the election campaign.
however, the Health Minister Victoria Atkins gave a speech at the launch of the birth trauma report in which she acknowledged that too many women had a bad experience giving birth in the NHS.
“There is far too much unacceptable variation across the country in the services women receive. Some mothers simply undergo unacceptable care and have to live with the consequences of that trauma for the rest of their lives,” she says.
NHS Resolution declined to comment.