Clinical / Social Care Negligence Cases in Northern Ireland 2018/19

Date published: 25 October 2019

The statistical bulletin presents information on clinical / social care negligence cases that were open at any stage during the year ending 31 March 2019.

Key Points

The key findings presented in the statistics release are listed below.

Payments in 2018/19:

• During 2018/19, £29.2 million was paid on clinical / social care negligence cases in Northern Ireland (Tables 1 & 2).

• Of the £29.2 million paid on clinical / social care negligence cases in 2018/19, almost three quarters (72.7%, £21.2m) was paid in damages, £5.8 million (19.9%) in plaintiff costs and £2.1 million (7.4%) in defence costs (Figure 2, Table 2).

• During the last five years, the amount paid on clinical / social care negligence cases decreased by £12.1 million (29.4%), from £41.4 million in 2014/15 to £29.2 million in 2018/19 (Table 1).

Payments to Date:

• During 2018/19, 3,995 clinical / social care negligence cases were open at any stage, 394 (10.9%) more than in 2014/15 (3,601) (Table 3).

• In 2018/19, 704 new cases were opened, 789 cases were closed, whilst 2,995 cases remained open and 211 cases had been settled at 31 March 2019 (Figure 5, Tables 4 - 8).

• Clinical / social care negligence cases open at any stage in 2018/19, had been open on average for 2.8 years, slightly longer than 2017/18 (2.6 years) (Figure 11).

• Over half (54.2%, 2,164) of cases open in 2018/19, related to four specialties; ‘Obstetrics’ (712), ‘Accident & Emergency’ (670), ‘General Surgery’ (413) and ‘Trauma and Orthopaedics’ (369) (Table 14).

A total of £138.3 million has been paid to date on the 3,995 clinical / social care negligence cases which were open at any stage during 2018/19. Over three quarters (76.9%, £106.3m) had been paid in damages and £32.0 million (23.1%) paid out in legal costs (defence and plaintiff) (Table 15).

Over half (56.2%, £77.7m) of the amount paid out on clinical / social care negligence cases open at any stage during 2018/19 related to the ‘Obstetrics’ speciality, of which, four fifths (80.7%, £62.7m) had been paid in damages (Table 16).