Tag Archives: medical negligence costs

• PAC medical negligence report: staggering sums lay bare a health service that is “not functioning”
• Lib Dems call for a critical incident to be declared after unsafe maternity unit in Somerset forced to closed
• Cole-Hamilton: Social care being doubly failed by Labour and SNP
• Cole-Hamilton: Both governments neglecting social care

PAC medical negligence report: staggering sums lay bare a health service that is “not functioning”

Responding to the Public Accounts Committee report, which condemned the ‘astronomical’ fees paid to medical negligence lawyers, Liberal Democrat Hospitals and Primary Care spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller MP said:

These sums are absolutely staggering and symptomatic of a health service that simply is not functioning, leading to frankly dangerous situations.

The Conservative Party’s shameful neglect brought us to this point, but the Labour government’s embrace of dither and delay on social care, maternity reforms and rebuilding our hospitals is prolonging the misery.

To turn this situation around, we need to see ministers move at speed by wrapping up their social care review by the end of the year, implementing the Ockenden report in full and rescuing our crumbling hospitals. To fail on this front condemns more patients to these horrific outcomes.

Lib Dems call for a critical incident to be declared after unsafe maternity unit in Somerset forced to closed

Maternity services in Yeovil are to close for at least six months after a warning from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), a situation that has prompted local Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance to call for a critical incident to be declared warning that it will leave families in “turmoil”.

The Somerset NHS foundation trust has announced that it will be closing the Yeovil Maternity Unit for six months, including the Special Care Baby Unit. The unit serves more than 1,200 births a year.

These women will instead be sent to Taunton, a maternity unit over 25 miles away and already over capacity in Musgrove Park Hospital, one of the hospitals facing delays following the Government pushing back many projects in the New Hospitals Programme.

The step was taken after the CQC served a warning that maternity services were “failing to meet the regulations related to staffing and governance systems”. Yeovil MP Adam Dance asked a question about the closure at Prime Minister’s Questions today in which Keir Starmer committed to securing a meeting for the local MP with a relevant minister to discuss the issue.