Sir, – Your recent coverage of medical negligence ignores the often life-shattering impact of medical negligence on victims (“‘Adversarial’ approach to clinical negligence contributing to State bill of €4.1 billion, conference told”, News, June 19th; Letters, June 21st, 22nd).
This mirrors the current interdepartmental working group looking at negligence costs under Dr Rhona Mahoney, which has excluded patients and medical negligence victims. In contrast, the HSE, the Department of Health and National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) are represented on the group.
Additionally, despite both the HSE and NTMA having access to contact details of thousands of negligence victims whose cases are being managed, no active effort was made to obtain their input.
The method of advertising for submissions resulted in a paltry 12 submissions, meaning that any report produced by this group will have close to zero input from those with lived experience of the medical negligence process but significant input from various vested interest groups.
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When a victim of medical negligence goes to the High Court, it is a sign that everything else has failed.
They then face a lengthy and costly battle with the unlimited resources of the Irish taxpayer lined up against them. In many cases, they are a mother having to take care of a child with a profound disability that requires 24-hour care. Given this, a little less “victim blaming” and a little more empathy would not go astray.
The biggest contributor to negligence is inadequate resourcing and the biggest factor in that is health service management’s resource misallocation and inefficiency.
In terms of legal fees, the HSE’s “deny and delay” approach to failings lengthens the legal process, significantly increasing the cost. This policy also prevents lessons being learned, resulting in entirely avoidable repeat errors.
Finally, weak and ineffectual oversight bodies have led to a situation where the only method of obtaining answers is through a High Court action.
Seeking to blame victims of medical negligence for looking for an explanation for failings and seeking funding for care that is only required due to health service failings is victim blaming. It is not acceptable and should not be tolerated. Those doing so would be better served calling out senior HSE and Department of Health management on the contribution of their management and front-line resourcing to rocketing negligence costs. – Yours, etc,
RUARY MARTIN,
Sandyford,
Dublin 18.