NHS facing £27bn bill for maternity failings in England
In an NHS annual report, NHS announced that it may face an invoice for £ 27.4 billion for birth failures in the UK.
It comes after several hospital scandals have caused hundreds of babies and women to be exposed to or suffer from a record number of legal claims.
According to the NHS decision, the potential invoice for birth negligence since 2019 is £ 27.4 billion. reportThe organization that deals with the allegations of negligence for NHS confidence in the UK.
Hospital scandals in the UK encouraged Health Secretary Wes Streeting to launch a national investigation on NHS birth services.
The new rapid investigation will look at “systemic” failures in the “up and down” neo-natal units of the “country, which leaves women and babies at a“ much higher ”risk than they should.
Streeting said that the investigation will focus on 10 “worst performances” birth service in the UK to provide emergency improvements for pregnant women and babies.
The NHS decision report, published on Thursday, paid NHS at 2024/25, compensation and associated costs generally paid £ 3.1 billion in general.
However, since it took some time to report and solve the allegations, and some allegations were solved to the future with multi -year payments to the future as periodic payment orders (PPOs), the “annual loss cost” for NHS plans was £ 4.9 billion.
This means that the NHS in the UK for events that can be avoided every year is currently the cost of compensation for £ 5 billion.
The Guardian was the estimation cost of birth at 2019/20, £ 5.7 billion in 2020/21, £ 5.1 billion in 2020/21, £ 8.2 billion in 2021/2, 3.4 £ 3.4 at 2022/23 and 2.5 billion at 2023/24 and 4024/25.
This estimated cost is much higher for newborns than the NHS budget in the last six years.
Former Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told Guardian: “It should be a matter of national shame to spend more than the total cost of pregnant services on birth cases.”
However, according to The Guardian, compensation for birth negligence constitutes part of a total amount of £ 27.4 billion, and a large share goes to legal costs.
In the last six years, £ 24.6 million has been spent on legal fees for demands that do not cause damage.
Liberal Democratic Hospitals Spokesman Jess Brown-Fuller, these figures show how much damage to NHS in birth services, he said.
“The crisis in our motherhood services is left naked during the trauma that many families should deal with.”
“This government has inherited an unacceptable situation that too many families suffer because of failures in motherhood care, and NHS pays billions for mistakes instead of correcting them.
“We are determined to break this cycle and provide safe, compassionate care for mothers and babies once and for everyone. So we have announced a rapid national birth investigation to determine where things are going wrong and determine the solutions.”
A spokesman also said that this creates a national birth and newborn duty force, and that it creates a new training program that will help prevent preventive injuries at a digital system and birth to better identify security concerns.
A NHS UK spokesman said: “We know that too many women and family do not receive high quality birth care they deserve and we are determined to change it.
“We are taking urgent steps to strengthen birth services, including more closely observation of low -performance confidences, and we will work with an independent investigation to ensure that we have learned from their findings and to offer the comprehensive changes that women and families need and deserve.”
The NHS decision said: “The cost of compensation in motherhood is due to a small number of serious events that cause brain damage to a baby at birth. These events are destructive for families and reflect the need to judge for lifelong and complex care needs.
“The NHS decision is determined to support the government’s action to provide improvements in mother and newborn security.
Imiz Our Early Notification Program provides an earlier compensation authority in the past than possible and to learn to be shared faster with NHS confidence. Also, our birth incentive program provides financial incentives to NHS confidence to bury safety standards.
