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04
Dec 2024
Harrogate hospital medical negligence payouts revealed
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust has paid more than £400,000 in gynaecology medical negligence claims in the last five years.
The trust has settled six claims since 2019 in gynaecology-related incidents, according to data gathered by Medical Negligence Assist.
The medical negligence lawyers gathered the figures via a freedom of information request to NHS Resolution, the legal arm of the NHS.
It found that the Harrogate trust had 14 claims and incidents of gynaecology-related medical negligence reported to NHS Resolution, of which six were settled at a cost of £415,178.
The findings come amid a damning new report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) which revealed that women are being left in "debilitating" pain for years with more than 760,0000 on the waiting list for appointments due to a gynaecology care "crisis".
In it, experts are calling for extra funding to speed up treatment for the more than three-quarters of a million women currently on waiting lists.
The RCOG has urged the government to provide immediate support for those on waiting lists and commit to long-term funding to tackle the “systemic issues” fuelling delays.
Dr Ranee Thakar, president of the RCOG, said:
A way forward is urgently needed to tackle the UK gynaecology crisis… NHS staff are also deeply concerned and distressed that they do not have the necessary resources to deliver good care, affecting their own wellbeing.
UK government must act now. The RCOG is calling on them to commit to long-term sustained funding to address the systemic issues driving waiting lists, alongside delivering an urgent support package for those currently on waiting lists.
The investment will not only benefit thousands of individual women but the wider economy too, because the evidence shows that healthy women are the cornerstone of healthy societies. Get it right for women and everyone benefits.
A Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said:
Patient safety is our priority. We aim to provide the highest standards of care for our patients and on the rare occasions that these high standards are not met, we are determined to learn from those instances so that we can prevent them from occurring again in the future.
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