Issue 14
March 2004

S.J. Edney solicitors were established in 1996 and are a niche Clinical Negligence and Personal Injury Practice. Seamus Edney is a member of the Law Society's Personal Injury Panel, Action Against Medical Accidents (AVMA's) Solicitors Panel and he is also a member of the Law Society's Clinical Negligence Panel. The firm holds a Legal Services Commission Franchise in Clinical Negligence.

As a firm we are committed to acting for victims of accidents and between us we have twenty five years experience of Clinical Negligence work.

Public Funding to be scrapped for medical disputes

It has been rumoured for the last two or three years that Public Funding will eventually be stopped for clinical negligence litigation. However, the Government has always been evasive when previously asked the question and has not either confirmed or denied these suspicions. In a recent article in The Times newspaper the Department of Constitutional Affairs confirmed that there may be changes to the way in which the Legal Services Commission fund clinical negligence actions and that these changes are likely to come into force some time after April 2005. It is likely that public funding for clinical negligence cases will now be scrapped although some sort of funding will still remain to investigate complex cases but once this funding has been used solicitors will be expected to take the case on a conditional fee (no win, no fee) basis.

Over the past couple of years solicitors such as S J Edney have been increasing the amount of conditional fee cases taken in the field of clinical negligence so that an effective conditional fee procedure will be up and running by the time the public funding changes come into being.

What is likely is that solicitors will be more careful in assessing which cases are pursued on a conditional fee basis and there will be clients with borderline but potentially high value cases who will not be able to find a lawyer. Denise Broomfield of S J Edney says "this is not really the way in which specialist clinical negligence solicitors like to practice. We would like to think that all injured patients would be able to be awarded the compensation that they need to compensate them for their injuries and out of pocket expenses. For some this will not be an option in the future as they will not be able to find a solicitor to take their case".

Of more concern perhaps is what is to happen to patients with large value risky cases. An example of this patient group is children with cerebral palsy. It is well recognised by the medical profession that only one in 10 cases of cerebral palsy is due to clinical negligence. Solicitors currently investigate these claims during public funding and all children with cerebral palsy can have the benefit of having the cases looked at to see if there is merit in pursuing an action. If public funding is stopped for investigation of these cases. We cannot see solicitors taking on cases where the success rate is only 10%, no matter how badly injured the patient is.

The withdrawal of Public Funding is likely to coincide with some of the changes recommended in the Chief Medical Officer's report "Making Amends" coming into force. One of these provisions is for payment of a lump sum and then annual amounts to all children who are victims of cerebral palsy. Patient pressure groups such as AvMA have expressed concern that the sums suggested in the report are far too low and will not pay for all the expenses incurred to look after such a badly injured patient for their lifetime.

The Government is anxious that all medical disputes should be resolved out of Court through mediation if at all possible. Litigation (and lawyers) should be seen as a last resort, not a first resort.

2005/2006 are likely to be interesting years in the field of clinical negligence.

 

Late onset Congenital Dislocation of the hip

New research puts the cat amongst the pigeons. Historically when a solicitor took instructions on behalf of a child who had suffered lack of diagnosis of Congenital Dislocation of the Hip a (CDH) the solicitor would heave a sigh of relief and gladly take on the case. The reason for this is that it has been accepted by the medical profession since 1969 that all children should be screened for CDH a few days after birth. This is frequently known as the "clicky hip" test and that by doing this many cases of CDH would have been picked up.

Failure to diagnose a CDH or failure to examine a child in this way constituted sub-standard medical care and claims for failure to diagnose CDH frequently succeeded. A paper recently published by Professor N Clarke of Southampton General Hospital has pointed to the possibility of there being a delayed dislocation of the hip which occurred when the child was 9 months old or longer.This point is recently being taken by Defendants and cases involving children with CDH are now being fought more vigorously. It will be interesting to see how these cases resolve over the next few years

 

DIAGNOSIS OF THE WEEK

Quite how often your GP will need to treat astronauts falling from space or patients sucked into jet engines is hard to say.

But family doctors around the country are geared up to treat just such eventualities.

Just as routine ailments have unique corresponding codes that must be entered into electronic records, so do the more bizarre reason for turning up to your local surgery, reports the magazine "G P".

T5340, for example, relates to "fall from an aircraft; occupant of spacecraft injured", while T5467 relates to "sucked into jet; parachutist injured".

T4026 must be a rare consultation - "fall from burning ship; docker or stevedore injured", as must U11M5, which is for use whenever a patient has been hurt by "exposure to high-pressure jet at sports or athletic area".

Even malingerers have their place in the so-called "Read codes". ZV65 should be typed when encountering a person "who has now complaints or sickness" and the medical reason for a visit is not clear.

But perhaps they are suffering from ZV480 - that's unspecified "deficiencies of the head" - or forgetfulness induced by TE508: "poisoning due to sea snake venom".

 

 

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This newsletter was produced by S J Edney, solicitors at Alexander House, 19 Fleming Way, Swindon, Wiltshire. SN1 2NG - e-mail sjedney@supanet.com
Telephone 01793 600721