Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The State Claims Agency (SCA) has a statutory remit to manage personal injury claims on behalf of Delegated State Authorities including the Health Service Executive.

Accordingly, the SCA has provided me with the information set out below in response to the Deputy's question. I have been informed by the SCA that this information has been extracted from the National Incident Management System (NIMS) according to the criteria and definitions set out below.

The information contained in this report has been extracted from the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Please note that the value of our current active clinical claims is not provided. This detail is published annually and, at year-end 2022, the estimated outstanding liability was €3.86bn.

Criteria used

• Healthcare and Healthcare private scheme locations are included in this report.
• Medical negligence claims are identified on NIMS through the Incident / Hazard Category of Clinical Care.
• Question 1 shows the number of clinical active claims, as at October end, being managed by the State Claims Agency.
• Question 2 shows the total amount paid in clinical damages (special and general) in the period 2020 – 2023, as at October end, and the number of cases related to these payments. Claims with no financial impact in the requested period have been excluded from this report. Amounts include VAT.
• This report is correct as of 31/10/2023.

Question 1 – Total number of active clinical claims

The number of active clinical claims being managed by the State Claims Agency, as at end October 2023, is 3,926.

Question 2 – Amount of damages paid in clinical care claims for the period 2020-2023 (as of end October 2023) and the number of claims these payments relate to.

Table 1 – The amount of damages paid in clinical care claims for the period 2020-2023 (YTD) and the number of claims these payments relate to.

Transaction Reporting Year	2020	2021	2022	2023 (YTD)
Damages Amount Paid €	€ 245,066,025	€ 284,856,265	€ 289,186,426	€ 215,041,063	€ 1,034,149,780*
Number of Claims	457	411	552	471	1,801**

* Totals may not add up due to rounding.

** A claim may have payments for damages in more than one year. The total number of claims reflects the unique number of claims for which damages were paid in the period 2020-2023 YTD.

Definitions:

National Incident Management System (NIMS):National Incident Management System (NIMS): Incidents (which include claims) are reported using the “National Incident Management System”, hosted by the State Claims Agency (SCA). An incident can be a harmful Incident (Adverse Event), no harm incident, near miss, dangerous occurrence (reportable circumstance) or complaint. NIMS is the system used by the delegated authorities to fulfil their statutory requirement to report incidents to the State Claims Agency and for their own incident and risk management purposes.

Incident/Hazard Category: The incident/hazard category is a high-level classification used to describe the cause of an incident. This is based on international recognised hazard classifications but which has been further developed to denote hazards that can have a direct or indirect impact on a person or property. This high-level classification is a grouping together of like type hazards which are broken down in further detail in the sub-hazard type. The high-level hazards include “Clinical Care”, “Exposure to Physical Hazards”, “Exposure to Psychological Hazards”, “Exposure to Chemical Hazards”, “Exposure to Biological Hazards”, “Crash/Collision” and “Property damage/loss (non-crash collision)”.

Clinical Claim:A claim which falls under the Incident Hazard category of Clinical Care. This category includes incidents relating to the provision of services of a diagnostic or palliative nature. It also includes incidents relating to the provision of treatment. Incidents present in this category will be related to Labour/Delivery, Diagnosis, Surgical/Medical, Care Management, Clinical Procedure, medication incidents or nutrition/blood related incidents.

Number of claims: Number of claims in this report reflects the number of unique claims transacted in the given period. This figure can include a small amount of potential claims.

Transaction Reporting Year: This refers to the year that payments were issued.

Damages Payments: Can includes both General Damages and Special Damages.

Special Damages: Compensation paid with respect to a Plaintiff’s out of pocket expenses such as loss of earnings, medical expenses, costs of care, etc.

General Damages: Compensation paid with respect to a Plaintiff’s pain and suffering.