NHS Highland and NHS Grampian paid out a combined £34m in patient compensation as Scottish Government is slammed for leaving ‘frontline NHS staff dangerously overstretched and more prone to making mistakes’

NHS Highland and NHS Grampian have paid out a combined £34 million to patients in compensation in the last five years over botched procedures, diagnostic mistakes and other errors.

The figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives sparked allegations the Scottish Government has left “frontline NHS staff dangerously overstretched and more prone to making mistakes”.

NHS Highland

NHS Highland paid out almost £10 million in compensation to patients across a huge range of health services in the region.

The total sum paid out by the health board since 2019-20 is £9,881,600 and most of that came in 2021-22 when six claims were awarded £5.9 million in compensation.

The other years the total compensation paid ranged from £650,000 in 2020-21 to more than £1.3 million in 2023-24.

What is just as big a concern is not the amounts paid out but what they were paid out for as they cover some of the most highly sensitive areas of medical care.

The full list can be seen below:

Over and over the phrase “diagnosis, failed or delayed” is used and stands for a mis-diagnosis or a delayed diagnosis both have serious consequences for patients.

They include payments for incidents in midwifery in labour or delivery and general surgery incidents where treatments, procedures, diagnoses “failed or delayed”.

In the medical and diagnostic division “diagnosis, failed or delayed” and in obstetrics and gynaecology where an “accident” may “result in personal injury.

In cancer services concerning radiotherapy consent, confidentiality or communication was a problem while a radiology diagnosis was “failed or delayed”.

Child and Adolescent Mental Health similarly saw “diagnosis, failed or delayed” while the surgical high dependency unit also saw “diagnosis, failed or delayed”.

NHS Grampian

NHS Grampian issued the huge sum of £23707360.11 to patient for dozens of treatments that went wrong.

While NHS Highland highlighted the care stage and the problems that arose, NHS Grampian detailed more precise numbers regarding how many claims were made by service or speciality.

These numbers can be seen in the document below:

But like NHS Highland there is a broad range of services that have experienced legal challenges to the outcomes clinicians and others sought to deliver ranging from A&E to urology.

The two worst years were from 2020 to 2022 when the health board paid out just over £6 million each financial year - there was then a dip to £1.1 million before that number more than quadrupled last year to £5.8 million.

The Tories blamed the Scottish Government for “the tragic yet predictable consequence” of medical staff being under-resourced due “dire workforce planning”.

‘Incompetence’

Conservative shadow health secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP said: “These eye-watering compensation payouts are the tragic yet predictable consequence of SNP mismanagement.

“Dire workforce planning by successive nationalist health secretaries has left frontline NHS staff dangerously overstretched and more prone to making mistakes.

“These errors often have catastrophic consequences for the patients involved, while the payouts they necessitate further reduce the resources available to already cash-strapped health boards.

“The SNP’s incompetence is creating a vicious circle in our NHS, and yet they don’t have a credible plan to tackle this crisis.

“Rather than continuing to defend his distracted and incompetent health secretary, John Swinney should adopt our common-sense plans to cut NHS bureaucracy, so that more money reaches the frontline and less has to go on compensation due to medical negligence.”

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