Medical negligence Solicitors – Law – Personal injury
Are ‘No Win Simply no Fee’ Medical negligence Solicitors Harming The NHS?
The introduction of ‘no win no fee’ was designed to ensure that once the Legal aid system got finished, those on low profits or without the funding to pay for their own solicitor still had the opportunity to create a successful claim through the legal courts. In the past few years no acquire no fee cases have become what many consider to be a deplete on NHS resources, along with the legal fees charged by solicitors has come in for the greatest criticism.
Average charges by solicitors taking on no win free cases is around ???65 an hour, however a successful case can mean a ‘fees bonanza’ from NHS funds, allowing a solicitor to bill the NHS at a rate of nearly ???400 an hour. The top fees payable to a no win free NHS Medical negligence Solicitor can be over ???800 an hour or so. The legal costs are often considerably higher than the actual compensation amount paid out to the claimant, and that is that drain on resources which critics claim is unacceptable.
The NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) claims that the fees for solicitorsare from proportion to the amount of chance taken on in pursuing medical negligence statements, and accuses the legal profession involving ‘cherry-picking’ cases that they feel will produce huge rewards for little risk. The specialist medical negligence claims solicitors counter these statements, explaining that far from becoming low risk most medical negligence claims are usually complex and require a large amount of work at the beginning of the state when the solicitor does not know whether they will be paid. They also accuse the actual NHSLA at being slow to be in cases, even those that provide clear evidence of being bone fragments fide medical negligence claims, and that a greater motivation to settle cases quickly would lead to lower legal costs.
The NHSLA is worried. Under its main system, the clinical negligence structure for trusts, around 50p in every pound is already spent on legal costs. The Authority paid out damages regarding ???264million in 2007-08. Legal costs for the defense team and claimants came to around ???134million. Whichever way you are doing the maths, that’s money that may be better spent on more negotiations which could be dealt with a great deal more quickly, say the claims specialist solicitors.
However, claims lawyers don’t believe that medical negligence claims are just about the money. In addition they say that there is a matter of theory involved as well in getting justifiable claims against NHS trusts. Not only do the cases compensate individuals who have been failed by the technique; they also highlight shortcomings in the organisation as well. By hurling a spotlight onto the trusts, they think that other patients might be spared the suffering a breakdown in the system could cause. Unless cases are outlined, the weak spot inside system, be that within the cleanliness of wards or satisfactory staffing levels, cannot be recognized and fixed. In the long run this will in fact save the NHSLA money. While improvements are made as a result of effective claims, fewer future situations will be forced through the legal method. The end result is a better NHS for anyone.
The bottom line in this perpetual discussion is that the onus is really about the NHS to provide a level of treatment that negates the need for the huge quantity of medical negligence cases brought every year. And in cases where there are grounds with regard to litigation, a quicker response by the NHSLA would result in reduced legal fees. If a claim highlights neglectfulness, paying up sooner rather than later might prevent the costs from installation up and also give clients the reassurance that the Trusts are not trying to ‘cover up’ their shortcomings inside a tangle of legal red tape.
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