Time for a couple more NHS-related dashboards, this time looking at claims made against NHS organisations. There are three main schemes that are run – Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST), Risk Pooling Scheme for Trusts (RPST) and the Existing Liabilities Scheme (ELS). CNST and ELS relate to clinical negligence claims post- and pre-1st April 1995 respectively, while RPST covers non-clinical claims. All three schemes fall under the umbrella of the NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA).
Handily, the NHSLA makes available data relating to the number and value of claims, released each year as "Factsheet 5" in the "NHSLA Factsheets" section (doesn't work in Safari). Factsheet 3 gives graphs by specialty, although not raw numbers it seems, and includes the possibly surprising fact that nearly 40% of claims last year were abandoned. I've combined the high-level raw data from 2003/04 to 2010/11 into one large dataset and then performed some extra manipulation to sanitise it a little (see the end of this post if you want the details).
The number of claims has escalated in recent years, as has the amount of money being paid out, and hopefully the charts below show these trends in an easily-digestible format. One word of warning though: think carefully about the numbers involved. The second dashboard shows the amount paid out in total across all schemes, which last reached £860 million pounds, and the figures being circulated for potential liability across all current cases top £16 billion. Numerous publications have looked into the reasons behind the changes, ranging from increased numbers of claims in times of recession, to increased – or non-existant – upper limits to claim values. This isn't my area of expertise, so I'll leave it to others to interpret the stats accordingly.
Speaking of stats, the NHSLA themselves put some good information on the front worksheet of each "factsheet" that they publish, and I would encourage anyone digging into these figures to read that blurb too. Note that, as discussed above, I have amended the data in the interests of collating it into a single dataset, so whilst I accept responsibility for any errors and/or omissions resulting from that process, the raw data provided by the NHSLA should always be taken as the gold standard for anyone drawing major conclusions from the information presented here.
The first dashboard looks at the numbers of claims received, including a comparison of whether a PCT with a larger population has more claims, while the second focuses on the cost of these claims overall, and the damages paid out.
Notes on the Data:
The standard data has been manipulated a bit to create my final version. Note that the requirement to change the data shouldn't necessarily be viewed as confirmation that it is inherently flawed; most of these amendments were made to facilitate analysis rather than correct errors. The revised dataset used to create the dashboards above can be downloaded here(MS Excel spreadsheet, 3Mb). The following changes have been performed:
- Combined the 'Trust' and 'PCT' sheets
- Standardised organisation names, using the most recent name on a sheet (2010/11). This is basically to harmonise name changes, e.g. a Trust becoming a Foundation Trust, and also deals with spelling errors and different abbreviations used across the years (e.g. "Mental Health Trust" vs. "MHT"). Some discrepancies will still be present where, for example, Trusts merged or split during the sample period.
- Filled in blanks for Strategic Health Authority using most recent values (one set of names is used to 2004/05, all are blank for 2005/06, a new set is used after that)
- Amended population values for 2010/11 from 000s to actual number, e.g. 306.5 becomes 306,500
