A Kildare Solicitor specialising in medical negligence has today claimed that medical litigation is set to explode after the HSE recorded over 1000,000 adverse events in 2012. Figures published by the State Claims Agency have shown that of the 905 non-clinical personal injury and third party property damage claims issued employees brought nearly two thirds of them.
Commenting on the latest figures published by the State Claims Agency Liam Moloney, a Naas based Medical Litigation Solicitor said today “these figures show an increase in the number of claims being brought by Employees of the HSE. In 2012 Employees brought 576 non-clinical claims which is compared to 289 brought by members of the public”.
Mr Moloney continued “ 42% of the total adverse events related to violence, harassment, aggression and abuse, followed by slips and trips and falls at 18%. 5% of the adverse events related to manual handling issues”.
Of the breakdown of categories in the case of falls, 17% were due to floor conditions and 12% from chairs, with ground/footpath and unknown reasons accounting for 7% each.
Claims brought by Employees have increased year on year from 185 in 2010 to 235 in 2011 and 252 in 2012.
The overall number of claims received by year increased from 394 in 2010 to 505 in 2012. There was an overall amount of 1,415 claims over the past 3 years.
Mr Moloney continued “it is clear that the extent of litigation against the HSE is continuing over the past 3 years. The majority of the claims relate to slips/trips/falls, road traffic collisions or violence”.
