Monthly Archives: December 2016

Hertfordshire Medical Negligence

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Do you live in Hertfordshire? Have you or a loved one suffered an injury because of a medical mistake?

You could be entitled to claim compensation and the specialist team of medical negligence solicitors here at Bonallack and Bishop can help you win that compensation.

UPDATE West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust – slammed as “inadequate”

The recent report on the trust by the Care Quality Commission [CQC] dated 10 September 2015 makes dreadful reading.

Let’s start off with its overall description. The hospitals run by the trust are simply “inadequate”.

But what does that actually mean? Well first of all it the second worst rating possible. The worst rating would be “no rating or rating suspended”. The CQC themselves describe “inadequate” as meaning “performing badly and we’ve taken enforcement action against the provider of the service.”

And going into more detail, the report doesn’t get any better. The five main areas of service provided by the hospitals are described as follow;

  • Safety – Inadequate
  • Effectiveness – Requires improvement
  • Levels of care – Requires improvement
  • Speed of Response –  Requires improvement
  • Leadership – Inadequate

And ratings for the three individual hospitals run by the trust were little better.

Hemel Hempstead General Hospital  was classified as “Requires improvement”, whilst the other two hospitals –  St Albans City Hospital and Watford General Hospital were both considered even worse – being described as “Inadequate”.

All in all very worrying for anyone living in Hertfordshire who has to rely on the medical services provided by these three local hospitals.

HERTFORDSHIRE – A HISTORY OF RECENT MEDICAL ERRORS

Sadly, Hertfordshire hospitals have seen a steady catalogue of really serious mistakes in the last few years. Here are just 4 of them;

  • Stevenage Lister Hospital required 20,000 cancer smear tests to be re-checked after one of the tester’s results dropped below the minimum 90% accuracy target for accuracy. It is estimated that about 1000 women would have to come in for a second test. The original tests were taken at Stevenage Lister Hospital, and although the samples were actually tested at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Welwyn Garden City’s QE II Hospital between July 2013 and March 2014, the need for retesting wasn’t announced until February 2015
  • January 2014 saw a disappointing report on Watford General Hospital by the Care Quality Commission – Britain’s hospital regulator. As part of a routine inspection, the hospital met the required standard on only one category “Respecting and involving people who use services”. It stated that action was needed on the remaining five categories which were;
    • Care and welfare of people who use services
    • Cleanliness and infection control
    • Staffing
    • Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision
    • Records
  • A report in October 2015 on ‘never events’ during surgery (i.e. events that should never have happened with proper medical care) found that the East And North Hertfordshire NHS Trust [responsible both for the Stevenage Lister Hospital and QE II Hospital in Welwyn Garden City]  was rated second-worst nationally – with mistakes including surgery on the wrong finger and a swab having been left inside a patient after a clinical procedure
  • January 2015 saw West Hertfordshire NHS Trust apologise for an incredible ‘wrong body’ mix-up – when having been told that his father had died, a man was taken to see his father’s body – but actually shown that of another recently deceased patient. The report from the NHS Trust failed to identify at which of the 3 general hospitals belonging to the trust [St Albans City, Watford General, or Hemel Hempstead], the incident occurred.

Sadly, these errors are just the tip of the iceberg. Hertfordshire hospitals seem to have a high level of medical mistakes.

However here at Bonallack and Bishop [this website is run by us, not by claims management company], our team includes a solicitor who was previously a fully qualified highly experienced nurse. So you can be sure that our team really understand claiming compensation for medical errors.

We are more than happy to represent people living in Hertfordshire – in fact, we are currently running medical compensation claims for a number of clients in Hertfordshire.

YOUR MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE CLAIM – HOW WE CAN HELP YOU

  • FREE first phone consultation
  • FREE first appointment
  • Your claim will be run throughout by a named specialist solicitor – not a call centre junior
  • No win, no fee available to run your claim – so you won’t need to worry about racking up a big legal bill.
  • Home and hospital visits for those who cannot travel

LIVE IN HERTFORDSHIRE? THINKING OF A MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE CLAIM? CALL NOW

Don’t delay talking to a solicitor – it’s important to know that time limitation periods apply to every medical compensation claim – so leaving getting legal advice for too long could result in you losing out on the compensation you are due.

For FREE initial advice and a FREE 1st appointment from expert Solicitors you can trust

  • Call our team now FREE on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544
  • Or use the contact form below

    Hemel Hempstead Medical Negligence

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    Have you, or a family member, been the victim of a medical error at Hemel Hempstead Hospital?

    If the answer is yes, you could be entitled to claim compensation. But for the best chances of a successful claim, you’re going to need an accredited specialist medical negligence solicitor. And at the time of writing, not only is there no such solicitor in Hemel Hempstead, but there’s no such specialist anywhere in the whole of Hertfordshire.

    But we can help – the specialist team of accredited medical negligence solicitors here at Bonallack and Bishop [the law firm who run this website] can help you win that compensation.

    The statistics make it clear how few genuinely independently accredited specialists there are – out of over 100,000 solicitors nationwide, just 180 have been accredited by the other leading panel for medical negligence solicitors [for details see below] and our team is led by one of them. And another member of the team, prior to qualification as a solicitor, was a highly experienced nurse.

    What’s more we regularly run cases in Hertfordshire.

    HEMEL HEMPSTEAD HOSPITAL – A HISTORY OF RECENT MEDICAL ERRORS

    Hemel Hempstead Hospital sees over 100,000 patients every year, and thankfully most of them receive excellent treatment. But unfortunately there have been a series of worrying mistakes made at the hospital recently,and indeed throughout Hertfordshire, some of which have given rise to medical negligence claims.

    Here are just four causes of real concern.

    • Latest CQC inspection report dated 10 September 2015
      The recent report by independent hospital regulator, the Care Quality Commission is not good news for local people. In short, the overall conclusion was that the hospital “requires improvement”.Of the four main areas looked at by the report, where there was enough information available to the sea QC, three out of four were described as substandard. In particular they found the following; 

      •  Safety – Requires improvement
      •  Speed of Response –  Requires improvement
      • Leadership – Inadequate

    The only good news was that overall, the level of care was described as good.

    However things got no better when the CQC went into more detail, looking at particular services. Of the only two services where there was enough information, both outpatients and A&E were both described as “requiring improvement”.

    All very worrying if you live in Hemel Hempstead and require medical care from your local hospital.

    • However sadly the latest 2016 report was nothing new.
      Respected hospital statistics website Dr Foster had issued a major report, covering patient deaths in NHS Trusts in England between April 2012 and March 2013. The report revealed that 16 NHS Trusts had higher death rates than would be expected among patients, and others performed badly on other factors which may contribute to patient deaths. One of the poorly performing Trusts was West Hertfordshire Hospital NHS Trust, which is responsible for three hospitals – Watford, St Albans and Hemel Hempstead General Hospital.

    Dr Foster looked into a range of hospital statistics such as a raw measure of how many people died during their hospital stay, how many died post-surgery, the numbers of patients how died within 30 days of being discharged from hospital and the deaths among low-risk patients who would have ordinarily be expected to survive. All of these figures showed that 10 hospital Trusts have one or more individual sites which have a death rate which is higher than the average for that particular Trust area.

    • Then in January 2015,  West Hertfordshire NHS Trust had to apologise for a horrible error. A man, after he had been informed that his father had died in hospital, was taken to seize father’s body – to pay his last respects. However some sort of mistake occurred and the man was actually shown the body of not his father – but of another patient who had recently died. The trust refused to identify which of the three hospitals they run was responsible for the error.
    • This followed a series of earlier errors where 810 suspected cancer patients were discharged, between January 2010 and November 2013, without having been seen. It is believed that at least one person died directly as a result of this failure and the others all needed to have their case reviewed. The Government’s Care Quality Commission has been looking into these failures.

    Even Hemel Hempstead hospital’s own Facebook page fails to inspire confidence. At the time of writing this article, the latest post from a patient read as follows:

    “There does not appear to be any one at Hemel Hospital or within the trust who knows how to deal with complaints , or is it that they just cannot be bothered ?”

    Unsurprisingly, in 5 months, no one from the hospital has bothered answering this post on their own website.

    Doesn’t give you much confidence does it?

    WHY APPOINTING A SPECIALIST MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE SOLICITOR IS SO IMPORTANT

    Click here to find out more about why you need a specialist medical negligence solicitor – and how you can identify one.

    Click here to find out what a medical negligence solicitor does – and why genuine expertise is so important.

    VICTIM OF MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE AT HEMEL HEMPSTEAD HOSPITAL? CALL US NOW

    Strict time limitation periods apply to all medical negligence claims – so don’t delay getting in touch with us.

    And you don’t need to worry about paying your legal bill with our No Win No Fee agreements.

    For FREE initial advice and a FREE 1st appointment from specialist Medical Negligence specialists you can trust:

     • Call our team now FREE on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544

    • Or use the contact form below