The Health Minister Edwina Hart has condemned as ‘highly inappropriate’ NHS leaflets which feature advertisements offering help to claim compensation through personal injury lawyers. According to the BBC, the leaflets were still being used at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, leading the Cardiff and Vale NHS trust to claim the leaflets were distributed by mistake.
The advertisements were provided on the back of leaflets regarding patient healthcare and appropriate exercises to aid recovery. The advertisements help fund the cost of distributing the leaflets.
The Health Minister had written to all NHS organisations in March 2008 and again this year to ask them to stop using the advertisements to fund the costs of leaflets.
It is understandable that the NHS would be wary about patients being provided with this kind of information and it does seem a bit daft that hospitals would promote such services at it is clearly not in their best interests. It should be noted that the advertisement in question provided help for claiming compensation for road traffic accidents, accidents at work or slips and trips rather than claims of medical negligence but you can certainly understand the NHS’s apprehension at hospitals encouraging such claims to be made because of the potential consequences that a claim might be made against them.
However, it may well be in the patient’s best interests to learn that they could make a claim for compensation. Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood noted that the NHS Trust set aside £3.2million as potential liabilities for personal injury claims. If that is so, then why shouldn’t individuals who have suffered due to poor treatment or botched operations be made aware that there is a pot available to help compensate them for injuries which were not their fault?
If anything, the knowledge that claims can be made for compensation if things go wrong should be a comforting for patients and should be a driving force to encourage hospitals and other NHS organisations to maintain and improve the standards of patient care.
