Injury Compensation News

In a High Court ruling, consultant obstetrician, Dr. Raymond Howard, was found liable for a 3.75 million euro compensation settlement, previously agreed in the case of Nicole Hassett of Clonmel, County Tipperary. Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill heard how Dr. Howard had delayed the birth of Nicole in 1997 with “absolutely no apparent reason”, causing her to suffer brain damage during the late stages of labour, and resulting in Nicole, now 13, suffering from cerebral palsy and being severely disabled.
The court was told how Dr. Howard was in St Joseph’s Maternity Hospital, Clonmel, from 12.15am on the morning of November 15. 1997, and should have delivered Nicole by 12.30am. However, he delayed the birth until 1.00am, during which time Nicole suffered the great bulk of her brain damage due to being left in the rigours of intense labour.
However, after hearing the circumstances of the “simply inexplicable” delay, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O’Neill ruled the HSE was entitled to be indemnified by Dr Howard due to his failure to adequately perform his duties and his breach of duty of care towards the child which was the proximate cause of her injuries.
The original court action was brought through Nicole’s mother, Orla, in 2005, and settlement was agreed against the South Eastern Health Board (now the Health and Safety Executive – HSE) with Dr. Howard and the UK-based Medical Defence Union as third parties.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is launching a new complaints procedure called  “Your Service, Your Say” that is aimed at obtaining both positive and negative feedback.  The HSE is presumably looking for opportunities to improve the health service. The HSE is aiming to provide a 30-day turnaround on complaints.

There was a 63 percent increase in complaints in 2009, with the total reaching 8,000.  Interestingly, despite the surge in complaints, the director of advocacy in the HSE, Mary Culliton, still believes there is under reporting of complaints due to patient’s reluctance to question medical decisions.

While the general principle of collecting feedback with the objective of improving services is an extremely positive development for the HSE, patients should be cautious regarding medical negligence and other types of hospital negligence.   The prudent approach is to speak to a solicitor before making any accusations regarding medical malpractice. It’s not just a question of defamation, but also because the victim may wish to make a compensation claim at a later date.

Mr. Justice John Quirke has approved a €2 million High Court settlement in the birth injury case of Sean Walsh of Naas, County Kildare, against the The Coombe Women’s Hospital in Dublin. In the claim against the hospital, it was alleged that when Sean´s mother was admitted to the hospital for the birth of her son on November 18 2003, the hospital failed to take account of abnormalities showing on a CTG trace during her labour. Consequently, the delivery proceeded without the assistance of forceps, resulting in the alleged likelihood of umbilical cord depression. It was further alleged that Sean was born with severe permanent disabilities and was noted to have quadriplegic cerebral palsy at the age of eighteen months. Despite The Coombe Women´s Hospital denying the claims, Mr. Justice John Quirke approved the settlement without admission of liability.

As child injury compensation settlements have always to be approved in court, Mr Justice John Quirke used the opportunity to pay tribute to Sean´s parents for their perseverance. Sean, who is now seven years of age, had sued the hospital through his mother Nuala, and an application has been made to make Sean a ward of court.

A jury at the coroner’s court returned a verdict of death by “medical accident” in the case of Louise Butler at the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick on November 16th, 2006 from a large subarachnoid haemorrhage, one month after she was mistakenly diagnosed with a migraine.

The wrong diagnosis occurred despite the family of the 21-year-old victim repeatedly requesting a brain scan.

The Jury has recommended that patients who present at hospitals with persistent and severe headaches should receive Cat scans  as soon as possible.

The Health and Safety Executive had already apologised in the High Court in July during proceedings and also made  a compensation payment to the family of Louise Butler.

A Medical Council fitness-to-practice committee ruling has attracted significant media comment over the past few days in the case involving the removal of the wrong kidney from a young child. After hearing most of the evidence in the case, the committee had decided to invoke Section 67 of the Medical Practitioners Act 2007 that allows doctors to undertake not to repeat their errors while avoiding being found guilty of professional misconduct. The incident occurred at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, in March 2008 when junior doctor Sri Paran, under the supervision of Professor Martin Corbally, removed a perfectly healthy kidney while leaving in place a barely functioning kidney.

The young boys’ parents, Jennifer Stewart and Oliver Conroy, repeatedly asked hospital staff to confirm which kidney was scheduled to be removed before the operation.  Despite this, it was revealed that nobody had reviewed the X-rays that were available in the operating theatre before the operation. The boy, now 8 years old, is left with a right kidney with 9 per cent functionality, leaving him requiring regular dialysis until he obtains a kidney transplant.

Professor Corbally immediately met with the parents of the boy and apologised.

This type of medical error happens all the time as is known as a “wrong-site operation”.  The problem is mainly due to poor procedures in operating theatre, where surgeons seem to resist the ‘checklist’ approach to operations that are common in other professions.  A good example is the pre-flight checklist used by all pilots all over the world, where they check even the most obvious things like fuel levels and radio signals.

Since there were no proper checklists in place for a kidney removal operation, there was no medical malpractice resulting from not following the non-existent checklist.  It was a simple case of human error.

There has been much commentary in the media about the new Health Services Executive (HSE) chief executive Cathal Magee facing a difficult first year implementing significant budget cuts. However, he also has a significant challenge changing the internal staff culture of the HSE, which was most recently criticised by the Ombudsman for its “rotten culture of secrecy” when dealing with medical malpractice.

Cathal Magree should start by reading the paper in August 17th issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine about a program launched by the University of Michigan Health System that encouraged health workers to report medical mistakes. The program included a procedure for telling victims about errors, who exactly made the error, what steps were made to prevent similar mistakes in the future, and mostly importantly, making a sincere apology to the patient or family. The procedure also included a process for offering fair compensation.

Reporting and explaining errors honestly to patients obviously leads to faster resolution of disputes, but also reduced the number of lawsuits by 36%.

A High Court settlement of €40,000 was approved by Mr Justice Michael Peart as compensation for  the distressed family of Ms Louise Butler, aged 21, of Cappa Lodge, Sixmilebridge, County Clare.  Louse Bulter died at Limerick Regional Hospital on November 16, 2006.

The settlement and apology followed a hospital negligence claim, which the HSE had initially denied. The claim was brought against the Health Service Executive (HSE) by Ms Butler’s brother James Butler, on behalf of his family, who insisted that Ms Butler would have lived if she had received proper medical care at Limerick Regional Hospital,

Between October 6-12, 2006, Ms Butler sought help at the hospital for an unbearable headache. Her family and doctor strongly urged the hospital to provide her with a CT cat scan prior to her leaving the hospital. Ms Butler was discharged on October 12 without having received a CT cat scan.  The hospital eventually did provide a CT cat scan for Ms Butler on October 13 that  showed massive bleeding in her brain. The family claimed that this came too later because Ms Butler collapsed and died before receiving the results.

Medical experts testified that if the scan would have shown the need for immediate treatment if it had been provided earlier.

The HSE apologised to the Butler family and admitted medical failures and deficiencies had contributed to Louise Butler’s tragic death.

The High Court has approved an interim settlement of €1.65 million for Charlotte Barry of Sandymount, Dublin, against the National Maternity Hospital.

It was claimed in court that the hospital failed to properly manage the labour, delivery and birth of Charlotte, who suffered hypoxic-ischaemic insult resulting in cerebral palsy. The young child now requires constant care.

The case was taken by Charlotte’s mother, Aisling Campbell, as her ‘next friend’. The hospital admitted full liability.

Although the compensation payments system is under review, there is not yet any legislation in Ireland that allows for staged payments.  The case has therefore been adjourned for two years on the understanding that the €1.65 million interim payment will be made immediately.

A survey by Red C on behalf of the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) has found that over 40 percent of Irish people feel that healthcare services they or their families have received are below the expected standards. The survey statistics were obtained using a representative sample of over 1,000 adults.

But only one third of the people that were dissatified with the healthcare they received actually made a complaint about the below-standard level of care.  One of the primary reasons was that 52 percent felt too intimidated to make a complaint. Over 80 percent of survey respondents said it was difficult to know where to make a complaint. The actual number of complaints received in 2009 by the Health Services Executive (HSE) was 7,984  which is an increase of 63 percent on 2008.

Hiqa is preparing draft national standards for better and safer healthcare that will eventually apply across the entire health sector.  The Hiqa survey found that 99 percent of people wanted to be informed when there was a problem with their treatment so it seems likely that Hiqa will propose better disclosure procedures in the new national standards. It remains to be seen if the HSE, which has a reputation for secrecy, will accept a more open approarch to patient disclosure when it comes to medical negligence.

Investigative journalists at the Irish Independent have revealed there has been at least 19 wrong body part errrors by surgeons  in  Health Service Executive (HSE) hospitals between 2005 and 2010.  Wrong body part surgical errors, sometimes called wrong-site surgeries, occur when a surgeon operates on the wrong part of a patient. The surgical errors in the HSE hospitals included operations on the wrong eye, ovary, kidney, leg, hand, and finger.

The HSE has already paid six hospital negligence claims as a result of the wrong body part operations, including a case where a surgeon in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin removed the wrong kidney of a boy in March 2008, leaving him requiring dialysis until he gets a kidney transplant.

Ireland has operated a centralised database since 2000 to which all adverse clinical incidents must be reported.  The data on wrong body part errors came from this database. The system means that while patients may not be fully informed and aware that they suffered some sort of clinical incident while receiving treatment in an Irish hospital, the error will be reported and logged in the centralised database.