Sunday Times - Letters

- 29 March 2009;Sunday Times

The NHS could and should do more by owning up to medical errors and providing speedy redress before complaining about the fees of clinical negligence lawyers. NHS staff are the first to know if there has been an avoidable error. In spite of encouragement over the years from the chief medical officer (whose office published Making Amends in 2003), NHS trusts and GPs are still slow to admit failings. By the time the patient discovers that injury could have been avoided, having perhaps gone through the Kafkaesque process that is the NHS complaints procedure, in which responsibility is often not accepted for errors, he or she is as cross as hell and in litigation mode. With no admissions, a case is risky and lawyers are entitled to high fees.

Sarah Harman Harman and Harman solicitors