Written answers
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
Department of Health
Medical Negligence Claims
Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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721. To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide, in tabular form, a breakdown of the total number of medical malpractice and clinical negligence claims that were filed against all publicly-funded hospitals, including voluntary hospitals, in each year from 2010 to 2014, inclusive; and if he will provide this information by specialty for each year at each of those individual hospitals. [31562/15]
Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The State Claims Agency has supplied the information requested by the Deputy in aggregate format, by specialty, as set out in the table below. The State Claims Agency has indicated that the reason it does not publish data concerning the number of legal claims against individual hospitals is that publication of such data could potentially identify a particular plaintiff. Many claims are settled in circumstances where the plaintiffs wish to retain confidentiality concerning the settlement of their cases. The other concern that the Agency has is that if it publishes claims’ data by individual hospital, this could lead to a “league tables” interpretation of the data without any further contextualisation of the data. Under Freedom of Information legislation claims’ data is expressly exempt.
| Location | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospital Groups 1 - 7 | ||||||
| Allied Health & Social Care & other specialties | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | ||
| Anaesthesia | 2 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 5 | 21 |
| Dental | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Gynaecology | 25 | 17 | 31 | 121 | 33 | 227 |
| Laboratory Services | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 15 |
| Maternity Services | 117 | 123 | 131 | 184 | 130 | 685 |
| Medicine | 116 | 151 | 134 | 145 | 150 | 696 |
| Mental Health Services | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 9 |
| Other Services | 22 | 30 | 18 | 9 | 12 | 91 |
| Radiology | 14 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 11 | 45 |
| Radiotherapy | 2 | 4 | 6 | |||
| Specialist Services | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Surgery | 109 | 167 | 406 | 197 | 192 | 1071 |
| Unknown (Legacy Data) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 25 | 28 | |
| Hospital Groups 1-7 Total | 413 | 509 | 735 | 674 | 569 | 2900 |
| Community Hospitals | ||||||
| Allied Health & Social Care & other specialties | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Ambulance Service (Road and Air) | 3 | 3 | ||||
| Dental | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 9 |
| Maternity Services | 3 | 6 | 9 | |||
| Medicine | 2 | 1 | 3 | |||
| Older Persons | 1 | 1 | 2 | |||
| Other Services | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Surgery | 1 | 2 | 3 | |||
| Unknown (Legacy Data) | 1 | 1 | ||||
| Community Hospitals Total | 10 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 11 | 34 |
| Grand Total for all Hospitals | 423 | 516 | 738 | 677 | 580 | 2934 |
Table 1: The number of "clinical care" claims created per year 2010 - to date per Speciality for the Hospital Group's 1-7 & the Community Hospitals.
Definitions:
1. A claim refers to notification of intention to seek compensation for personal injury and/or property damage where it is alleged the State was negligent. The application may be in the form of a letter of claim, an InjuriesBoard.ie application, or a written/oral request.
2. Incident Hazard Category - 'Clinical Care' - This includes incidents relating to the provision of services of a diagnostic or palliative nature. It also includes incidents relating to the provision of clinical treatment. Incidents present in this category will be relating to clinical procedures, medication incidents, or nutrition/blood related incidents etc.
3. Unknown - 'Legacy Data'refers to incidents whereby the specific category was not available prior to the NIMS upgrade.
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