Long hospital waiting times

In the winter months, there are always concerns over long hospital waiting times which can stem from shortages of beds and staff.

There’s usually an increase in the number of people who require care in colder months which is why the shortages can occur. Although some patients can wait for longer when it comes to non-urgent matters, the worry is when something more urgent is missed.

In some cases, a delayed diagnosis or delayed treatment can lead to complications. It’s these cases where this isn’t identified that can cause problems and lead to cases of negligence against the NHS.

Can you claim for long hospital waiting times?

In some cases, it’s possible for a patient to be able to make a claim for medical negligence compensation that arises from long hospital waiting times.

It’s important to know that this kind of claim is very much assessed on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, especially at this time of the year, longer waits cannot always be avoided. But patients in need of urgent care must be prioritised, and where complications arise, a case may be able to follow.

It all comes down to whether there was any negligence. If a patient in need of more urgent care hasn’t been seen quickly enough because their care needs weren’t identified or met, a claim can be possible. It’s about proving negligence over unavoidable incidents, and where we believe that we can do this, we may be able to offer No Win, No Fee representation.

How do we prove a case?

As referenced above, we must establish that some form of negligence has taken place for a patient to be able to claim compensation for long hospital waiting times.

We use a combination of our own expertise and independent medical evidence to be able to show that (where it can be shown):

• There was a mistake or some form of negligence that was related to the longer wait;
• The longer wait has resulted in complications and / or additional avoidable suffering.

In terms of claiming for further suffering, this can also depend on the level of suffering. If you suffered a little pain for an extra few hours due to a mistake, it might be hard for us to take a case forward because the value of the claim could be small. However, if you developed serious complications that meant you had to have considerably more treatment as a result of a delay, you could claim for that.

Accuracy of data for long hospital waiting times

Recently, the NHS was reportedly accused by the head of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine of a “cover up” regarding patients waiting for over 12 hours in hospital.

It has been suggested that the number of patients who have had to wait for longer than half a day is at 38,000 since October this year. However, official numbers from NHS England reportedly state that there has only been a total of 13,025 patients waiting for longer than 12 hours since 2011-2012.

I think that it’s important that accurate figures are always portrayed in order for the best improvements to be made. If it’s the case that accurate figures are not being conveyed as suggested, this is something that ought to be rectified.