€60m to be paid out for medical errors

MORE than €60 million will be paid out to patients who have suffered from serious medical errors in the health service this year – a massive rise which almost equals the total figure over the last five years.

Speaking at the Irish Hospital Consultants Association annual conference in Cavan at the weekend, Senior State Claims Agency (SCA) official Dr Ailis Quinlan said the major sum will be provided as compensation for thousands of medical negligence claims being taken by patients.

The figure, which is just €13m lower than the total paid out by the State between 2003 and 2008, is six times higher than the €11m provided in 2006 and €20m more than in 2008.

However, the head of the SCA’s clinical indemnity scheme said the figure represented just a fraction of the known medical errors recorded in the system.

“A study in US hospitals has reported that only 2% of negligent adverse events lead to clinical malpractice claims, and the same is true here,” said the senior SCA official.

“Our own statistics show that there have been 282,045 near misses since January 2004, but only 3,522 of these events have gone on to be claims,” she added.

While the figure for medical compensation payments was just €162,157 in 2003, SCA figures show it has risen significantly over subsequent years, with a total of €99m expected to be paid out between 2008 and 2009 alone.

Among the most troubling mistakes recorded last year were patients receiving the wrong medication (6,785 cases), incorrect diagnoses (2,051), blood transfusions incidents (824), and mistakes in medical records (5,070).

As a result of the rising figures, the commission on patient safety and quality assurance is expected to call for the mandatory reporting of all medical errors by staff, a situation which is voluntary at present.

However, despite the benefits such a policy may create, Dr Quinlan said it could also force evidence of any incidents to be “pushed underground” by physicians due to fears for their future career prospects.

Instead, she argued that a similar policy to that developed by the University of Michigan in the US where court action or medical negligence claims were considered a last resort should be put in place in Ireland.

In Michigan, Dr Quinlan said a system of voluntary openness by medical staff to patients helped to reduce the number of new claims from 121 in 2001 to none since the start of 2007.

“Patients want be to acknowledged and to have what happened explained to them.

“That open policy reduces the risk of claims,” she said.

News of the major pay-out for medical negligence claims in Ireland comes after the Irish Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery said the health service recruitment ban has meant staff are overworked and struggling to meet “bare minimum safety standards” for patients.

The organisation’s honorary president Irene O’Connor said significant medical errors are occurring as nurses who are on maternity leave, have retired or have been reassigned are not being replaced, while medical records were becoming a “shambles”.

Figures released in April show that since the health service recruitment ban was first imposed in late 2007 there has been a significant rise in medical mistakes and patient injuries in public hospitals.