Medical Negligence Associate Solicitor
The way in which GPs (doctors) in the UK are insured against potential clinical or medical negligence claims changed from today 1st April 2019. GPs no longer have to pay for their own insurance cover every year; instead, it is backed by the UK government. The New Indemnity scheme for general practice was introduced but, not everything is covered by the new scheme; and whether your GP is covered for any particular issue depends on what has happened.
In most situations, your GP will be covered for a medical negligence claim. The state-backed scheme applies to all NHS negligence claims where the treatment occurred after 1st April 2019. This will work in a similar way to how cases against NHS hospitals have been managed, which is called The NHS Resolution Team.
That said, the new scheme doesn’t insure GPs if they do private-paying clinical work or provide treatment as a ‘good Samaritan’. In these cases (and for other types of work outside of front-line treatment), GPs still need to take out separate insurance. But they don’t usually result in medical negligence claims.
From the financial years of 2010/11 to 2022/23, there were over 13 thousand clinical negligence claims reported to NHS England, and the number that reached some sort of settlement was 13,499. The NHS Resolutions team are there specifically for cases like this, and although it seems like a huge amount of medical negligence, there are 1.6 million interactions with patients within the NHS per day – making this a very busy entity, and mistakes can happen.
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If we break a bone in our body, we expect it to be diagnosed and treated when we visit Accident & Emergency. Missed fractures are not uncommon though, leading to unnecessarily prolonged pain and sometimes further complications.
NHS maternity services include the care pregnant mothers receive during the antenatal period, as well as during the birth itself and postnatally. While the majority of NHS maternity services are delivered without incident, it’s not uncommon for mistakes to happened.
British Medical Association (BMA). (n.d.). State-backed GP Indemnity Scheme. Retrieved from https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/medical-indemnity/medical-indemnity/state-backed-gp-indemnity-scheme
NHS Resolution. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://resolution.nhs.uk/
Statista. (2023). Number of claims reported to NHS England by type. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/893770/number-of-claims-reported-to-nhs-england-by-type/
UK Government. (n.d.). New indemnity scheme for general practice introduced. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-indemnity-scheme-for-general-practice-introduced
Kate joined the Clinical Negligence department at Simpson Millar in January 2023 after previously working at Chris Kallis Solicitors in Plymouth. Kate qualified as a solicitor in 2004 and has developed extensive experience in both Personal Injury and Medical Negligence.
Initially Kate started working as a Defendant Solicitor for firms such as Bond Pearce LLP and DAC Beachcroft Claims Ltd. This has allowed Kate to develop a tactical advantage to her cases, using the experience of how a claim is dealt with from a Defendant’s perspective.
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