The fruitless £2.4 billion spent on legal fees by the NHS, yearly..
The NHS spends £2.4 BILLION a year, on legal fees fighting cases against it, largely in the area of infant deaths.
This is ridiculous.
Firstly, you should not be able to sue a service that is provided practically for free.
Secondly, aside to the very odd exception like Lucy Letby, no-one in the NHS deliberately kills people. They are there trying to help, under increasingly difficult circumstances, some of those strains no doubt put on them by the same kind of people that are suing them.
Suing people does not bring back the dead. The Swedish Government have recently banned all litigation against their own health service, even if gross negligence is cited. Why ? Because life is life and there is risk in everything we do and there was no deliberate intent.
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Even paid for health services are not there to purposefully kill people and some people seem to have lost all perspective on what the realities are. A birth that has not been handled perfectly that results in the death of a newborn baby or the mother, is very unfortunate, particularly if both mother and child were in good health. However, complications in childbirth are common and doctors and midwives are not miracle workers. They have to deal with situations as they unfold. Sometimes they make the correct call, and sometimes they don't and manage to repair it, and sometimes they cannot. And on occasion, a critical situation arises which they react correctly to, immediately, and they are still unable to prevent the death. This is fate and they cannot be blamed for that. They should not be blamed for making decisions that, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe they could have made differently.
Many children die in childbirth or prematurely, because nature intended it. Just as miscarriages prior to birth are normally the body’s way of saying something is amiss with a foetus and its better if it is not born. That will sound harsh to some, but it’s being cruel to be kind, and frankly, it’s not about the parents, it’s about the baby and what kind of life it will have if it is severely disabled and unable to ever fend for itself throughout adulthood, let alone childhood.
That is another subject altogether, so returning to the point, we should follow Sweden's example. £2.4 billion is a lot of money that could be far better spent. Suing the NHS will not bring anyone back from the dead and people need to start learning that the health service, like every other profession, is not perfect and that suing and demanding compensation from a virtually free service, who intentions are only good, is obtuse to say the least.
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Consider this. Most private practises will make you sign waivers before any operation, ensuring you understand that there is a minor risk with the anaesthetic and the operation itself. If you die or the operation is not a success or has some undesired side effect, you're unlikely to be able to sue them, despite paying many thousands of pounds for the privilege. Why ? Because there is a risk in everything we do and you cannot constantly lay the blame at someone's feet. If those rules apply for the private health sector then they sure as mustard should apply to the NHS.
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I'll leave you with this.
The recent blood transfusion scandal that is rocking the UK, labelled as the biggest treatment scandal in NHS history, is another classic case where people do not look at the bigger picture.
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Given that the vast majority of the 30,000 people affected were given transfusions for emergency reasons (mainly loss of blood after childbirth or major surgery) the reality is that if these transfusions had not been given at the time, most of those people would have died there and then, on the operating table. So, instead of pro-longing their lives by many years, they would have just died then. Had there not been the blood to give them, the NHS would have been lambasted for not having enough in the blood banks and the very reason this happened in the first place is because there were mass shortages and the drive to get people to give in the USA, with cash incentives drew out of the woodwork less than ideal candidates. We then imported this blood because we didn't have enough and weren't prepared to pay people to give...
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So, I say to those affected, "Yes, it should not have happened but you or your affected relatives would have been around a lot less time if the blood had not been give. The cover up is scandalous for sure, but given the alternative, which would have been no transfusion at all, and likely immediate death, what would you prefer, given that the world is not perfect, never has been and never will be".
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G. Hoff - Editor
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