Hunter New England Health has paid out $24.4million over the past two years for medical negligence ranging from incorrect diagnoses to surgical procedures performed on wrong body parts.
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Documents obtained under Freedom of Information show 84 negligence claims were completed between March 2008 and March this year.
The payments, resulting from court verdicts and settlements, reflect a growing trend among aggrieved patients who are choosing to sue for adverse outcomes.
Amounts ranged to more than $7million in a specialist obstetrics case. The average payment was $291,195.31.
The negligence cases covered areas including emergency medicine, specialist surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, radiology, psychology and general medicine.
Cases ranged from swabs being left in after surgery, procedures performed on the wrong body part, the wrong procedure being performed, failure to diagnose foetal abnormalities, not obtaining valid consent, incorrect patient monitoring, wrong medication and injuries suffered from slips and trips.
Specific case details could not be obtained, but most negligence claims related to diagnosis issues, failure to provide treatment issues and procedural and surgical issues.
Patient advocate and Medical Error Action Group head Lorraine Long said more people were choosing to sue because they had lost faith in established complaint channels.
‘‘We actually encourage people to sue because organisations such as the Health Care Complaints Commission are basically dysfunctional,’’ she said.
‘‘You can waste three years writing to the minister and the hospital and getting nowhere.’’
Newcastle-based medical negligence lawyer Catherine Henry said her practice had grown considerably over the past eight years.
‘‘The motivation for most people is that they don’t want what has happened to them to happen to someone else,’’ she said.
She said most matters were resolved before hearing.
Hunter New England Health director of clinical governance Kim Hill said the settled medical negligence claims needed to be considered in the context of the vast array of health care provided each year.
Emergency department care was provided for 355,271 people and 187,247 episodes of inpatient care were provided in the 2008-09 financial year.
‘‘It is clear the vast majority of care provided through our various hospitals and community health centres is both safe and at an excellent standard,’’ Dr Hill said.
‘‘Hunter New England Health acknowledges that unfortunately sometimes things do not go the way we would like for a relatively small number of patients.
‘‘In these instances, Hunter New England Health has taken the lead in making sure we are providing the best level of care by monitoring incidents when they do occur.’’
