the NHS Redress Act 2006

The NHS Redress Act was passed in November 2006 and is to be implemented after April 2007.

The Act comes as the government’s response to the rising ‘compensation culture’ and concerns about the cost to the NHS of clinical negligence claims brought by patients who have suffered in its care.  It is also said to attempt to make the compensation ‘system’ easier and quicker to deal with and manoeuvre through for patients themselves.  Further, the scheme will extend to relatives following the death of a patient.

The idea is that medical negligence claims, valued at under £20,000, should be dealt with through a new redress scheme, avoiding litigation through the courts altogether.  Acceptance of compensation under the scheme bars a patient from later taking legal proceedings.  The financial compensation under the scheme is intended to roughly equate to the level of compensation a court might order if the matter went through the legal system.

The Act obviously applies only to claims arising from hospital care within the NHS, not private health care.  Neither does it apply to care given by GPs or dentists in surgeries.

Some key perceived problems with the Act at this stage are:

• the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) will operate the new scheme.  It will decide liability and compensation as well as instituting and investigating claims.  The Act has been criticised for failing to involve an independent provider to oversee the scheme
• there is no appeal process from the scheme.  If a patient is unhappy with the NHSLA’s offer, litigation may be commenced to deal with the claim.  This could often effectively take the patient back to ‘square one’
• obviously, as the redress scheme applies to only low value clinical negligence claims, namely those up to £20,000, it will not apply to the bulk of such claims which tend to be of a higher value.  As such, the drain on NHS expenditure in dealing with clinical negligence cases is likely to be curbed only minimally and the government’s aims to tackle the perceived ‘compensation culture’ are similarly limited

There has been much debate as to whether the Act will create a system that is better for patients in an already vulnerable position.  The debate continues.

For further information please contact Alison McClure in the Clinical Negligence team on 023 8085 7345 or email alison.mcclure@bllaw.co.uk