Bedford Hospital Compensation Payouts Guide
This article is about Bedford hospital compensation payouts and how you can make a clinical negligence claim for compensation if you or a loved one has been affected by medical negligence while being treated by the Bedford Hospital NHS trust. Throughout this guide, we have attempted to provide you with as much information as possible regarding clinical negligence claims, different stages in the medical negligence claims process and different Bedford hospital compensation amounts. Continue reading to find out more. You can call our team on 0800 652 3087 or fill out a contact form to speak to our team.
Choose a section
- A Guide To Bedford Hospital Compensation Payouts
- What Do We Mean By The Term Medical Negligence?
- Statistics About Bedford Hospital Compensation Payouts
- Case Study £5m Lifetime Compensation Award For Brain Damage
- £28m Compensation Paid Out By Bedford Hospital
- I Have Been Affected By Hospital Negligence, Could I Claim?
- Our Panel Of Doctors In This Area
- No Win No Fee Bedford Hospital And Hospital Trust Negligence Claims
- Contact Medical Negligence Assist
- Reference Materials
A Guide To Bedford Hospital Compensation Payouts
In this guide, we will look at different circumstances in which you could claim for medical negligence against Bedford Hospital NHS Trust, providing some case studies to illustrate how long cases can last for and the amounts of compensation claimants can receive and a table of statistics of Bedford hospital compensation amounts. Finally, we will go through some of the steps of finding a medical negligence solicitor, starting a medical negligence claim and how our legal experts and our panel of medical negligence solicitors can help you to potentially make a successful claim for compensation.
What Do We Mean By The Term Medical Negligence?
Clinical negligence, or medical negligence as it is often referred to, is an instance in which a person’s health is harmed as a result of the poor quality of care they receive from medical practitioners which has fallen below acceptable standards or medical professionals failing to adhere to the correct procedure. Clinical negligence claims can be made for; residential care home for neglecting of resident’s needs, against GP’s for misdiagnosis or incorrect prescriptions or against dentists for causing injury or infection to a patient’s gums or teeth. Clinical negligence can be grounds for a type of personal injury claim, and the aim is to receive compensation for physical and emotional harm caused by the effects of medical negligence. In order to claim there must have been unnecessary harm suffered. If you have a valid claim for personal injury as a result of medical negligence, you could also claim for lost earnings among other things. You can read our personal injuries claims calculator to get an idea of how much compensation you may be owed for the effects of medical negligence, but be aware that this is not a substitute for getting an evaluation with our team of legal experts.
What Do We Mean By Negligence At A Hospital?
Hospital negligence is a form of clinical negligence relating to the standard of hospital care a patient receives. Substandard hospital care can lead to, among other things, patients being left in dirty unchanged bed sheets and clothes, patients not receiving help moving around and performing tasks such as washing and going to the toilet, and patients not having their intake of medication monitored or being provided with adequate meals and hydration. If a hospital does not uphold acceptable standards of hygiene and there is the risk of infections, including the potentially fatal MRSA then this maybe considered as hospital negligence. We have linked out to our hospital negligence page at the bottom of this guide for you to read further regarding hospital negligence as a whole.
Statistics About Bedford Hospital Compensation Payouts
In the table below we have included the figures for Bedford hospital compensation amounts paid out for the years 2016/17 and 2017/18 as well as the number of claims that were made for these compensation payouts. This will give you an impression of how often legitimate clinical negligence claims are made against Bedford Hospital and the compensation amounts that are paid out afterwards.
| Damages/year | Value of payments | Name of hospital or NHS trust | No. of successful claims against hospital/trust |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017/18 | £2,591,034 | Bedford hospital NHS trust | 33 |
| 2016/17 | £2,306,670 | Bedford hospital NHS trust | 33 |
Case Study £5m Lifetime Compensation Award For Brain Damage
A teenage girl was awarded a £5 million compensation payout in 2013 for a clinical negligence claim against Bedford Hospital. She suffered brain damage as a result of complication during childbirth while being delivered in Bedford hospital in 1998. According to the claim, she suffered asphyxia after becoming stuck during delivery and had to be resuscitated; a doctor was called for but was unable to reach the maternity unit in time due to a locked security door. Had the delay in the delivery not taken place or the alarm had been raised sooner, the girls family’s QC states, she would have been in perfect health. Instead she currently suffers from “severe cognitive and physical handicaps as well as a life expectancy cut short”.
The Bedford Hospital NHS trust agreed to pay out compensation despite not admitting liability. The payment was a £1.5 million lump sum with an additional £126,500 a year, increasing to £177,500 a year when the child turns 18, to cover all care costs. The case was resolved after ten years. This case study demonstrates the severity of the effects of medical negligence that some victims can suffer from, the significant size of the financial compensation payouts that can be awarded and also the length of the legal battles that some victims have to go through before being awarded the compensation they deserve. You can find more information about this case in the article in the URL below.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9940125/Baby-left-brain-damaged-after-doctor-delayed-by-security-door.html
£28m Compensation Paid Out By Bedford Hospital
According to Clinical Negligence Scheme Trusts (CNST) statistics from NHS resolution, the NHS litigation authority, in the five year period between the year 2012 and the year 2017 Bedford hospital compensation payouts amounted to just under £28 million, this figure includes solicitor’s costs and court costs. The figure of £28 million means that Bedford Hospital NHS trust ranks at 101st out of 256 NHS hospital trusts for compensation payments awarded. Bedford hospital compensation payouts are equivalent to paying around £100 per day. By comparison Bart’s Health NHS Trust, London paid £123,000,000 equivalent to over £67,433 per day. It is should be noted that the amount of NHS compensation claims that each NHS health trust faces and the amount of compensation it pays out may not necessarily reflect the quality of care in that specific NHS health trust, rather it could reflect the size of the trust, the number of patients that they treat and the number of acute health issues and emergencies they deal with. You can read more information in the article in the URL below.
https://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/news/bedford-hospital-pays-out-28m-in-negligence-compensation-in-just-5-years-1-8337515
I Have Been Affected By Hospital Negligence, Could I Claim?
If you think that you are entitled to make a clinical negligence claim against Bedford hospital or a doctor who works there, but are unsure about whether or not you have grounds to do so, then the first thing you should do is call our team on 0800 652 3087 to speak to our legal advisors about the medical negligence claims process. They will let you know whether you have grounds for making a clinical negligence claim. They will also discuss the medical negligence claims time limit.
Once you have spoken to our team and have been informed about your rights to making a medical negligence claim your next task will be finding a medical negligence solicitor to work with on your case. You should prioritise finding a medical negligence solicitor who has a strong track record of success in clinical negligence claims with circumstances similar to yours, who is regarded by their previous client as communicating well and often with them and who works on a no win no fee basis. You can find out all of these things by reading reviews of personal injury lawyers (they will be easy to find on the internet) and by asking around friends, family members and work colleagues about whether they have made personal injury claims in the past and what their experiences were like.
One issue that you do not have to factor into your decision is the location of your prospective clinical negligence solicitor. You may have been tempted to start your search by googling “solicitors near me” in order to find personal injury lawyers in Bedfordshire, this is unnecessary and arguably counterproductive . It is not particularly important where your clinical negligence solicitor is based, what matters more is whether they have the expertise, the experience and the best chance of successfully winning a Bedford Hospital payout on your behalf. Don’t be put off by a solicitor who is based in a different part of the country, as most solicitors nowadays will be perfectly willing to discuss your claim with you by phone or over voice chat and exchange documents via email. You may well find working by phone or email with a clinical negligence solicitor is easy to work with rather than having to travel to their offices all the time.
We would like to give you the option of making a no win no fee clinical negligence claim with a clinical negligence solicitor from our panel of solicitors. Once you begin the medical negligence claims process they will begin gathering evidence for your case, it will be arranged for you to have a medical examination from a doctor, assessing how much compensation your clinical negligence claim will be and, once your case is underway, they will represent your case keeping you updated and abreast of the progress that is being made.
Our Panel Of Doctors In This Area
Being given a medical exam by a doctor and receiving a medical report is crucial to your medical negligence claim process, without it your case will be regarded as having no supporting evidence and your clinical negligence claim will be dismissed. Without a doctor’s report, your medical negligence solicitor will also not be able to calculate how much compensation your injuries are worth. Our panel of solicitors work with a panel of doctors to provide clients with medical examinations for their clinical negligence cases. This panel of doctors covers almost every locality in the UK. If you make a no win no fee clinical negligence claim with our panel of medical negligence solicitors you have a good chance of having a medical expert based in your area to provide you with a medical examination for your clinical negligence claim. Some of the doctors covering your area are listed below.
Raheela Khand
245 Ampthill road
Bedford
MK42 9AZ
No Win No Fee Bedford Hospital And Hospital Trust Negligence Claims
You can make a no win no fee NHS compensation claim through our panel of medical negligence solicitors. A no win no fee agreement would be ideal for most claimants as it reduces the financial risk dramatically. Essentially, it means that if you have a valid claim that is unsuccessful for one reason or another you will not have to pay your solicitor for their services. It also means that if your claim is successful your solicitor will deduct their fees from your compensation amount at the end of your claim. If you would like to discuss the further benefits of making a claim using a no win no fee agreement, please contact one of our legal advisors today.
Contact Medical Negligence Assist
If you have any questions about making an NHS compensation claim or any questions about anything you have read in this guide call us on 0800 652 3087, or fill out this contact form. Our phone line operates round the clock, so you can call at any time that is convenient for you. If you fill out a contact form our team will get back to you as soon as they can. You can also contact us if you wish to begin the medical negligence claim process with our panel of solicitors.
Reference Materials
Bedford Hospital Care Quality Commission Page
Written by Jack.
Edited by Charlotte.