UK HOSPITAL NEGLIGENCE COMPENSATION CLAIMS

We are an independent network of specialist hospital negligence solicitors and we are all members of The Law Society panel of medical negligence experts. Legal aid is available to investigate and take legal proceedings to claim compensation as a result of medical negligence. Less than 1% of solicitors in the UK are franchised by the Legal Aid Board to act on behalf of medical negligence claimants and it is important that you make the right choice of solicitor at an early stage in your compensation claim.

Hospitals can be liable for the negligence of their employees including doctors, nurses and technicians. Medical mistakes occur not only in hospitals but in day surgery and outpatient clinics, GP’s surgeries, retail pharmacies, nursing homes and home care. Hospital negligence occurs for a variety of reasons including inadequate training and failure to keep up to date with modern techniques through to simple problems such as illegible handwriting and misreading of medical charts or drug information sheets. It is estimated that there are thousands of deaths every year in the UK which occur as a result of clinical negligence and countless other serious problems the majority of which are never attributed to medical errors.

Clinical negligence occurs when a health care provider has failed to act in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of skilled medical practitioners. Often there are several acceptable ways of carrying out a specific medical procedure and compliance with any of these will mean that the healthcare provider was not negligent. The fact that the one doctor would not have done things in the same way as another does not automatically mean that there was negligence. If it can be shown that there was hospital negligence then in order to succeed in a claim for compensation it must be shown that the negligent act caused damage. It is only possible to recover compensation for damage caused by that negligence and if the damage would have occurred in any event then the healthcare provider will not be liable to pay compensation.

Our solicitors are specialists who are authorised by The Legal Aid Board to make an immediate application for legal aid. For those who do not meet the legal aid criteria it may be possible to take legal proceedings using the no win no fee scheme. For free advice on our Legal Aid and no win no fee service from specialist solicitors then just complete the contact form and a member of The Law Society panel of medical negligence experts will telephone you to discuss your claim.