When your medical treatment falls below the expected standards, it can be hard to know what to do. That’s why we’ve created this guide examining how much compensation for medical negligence you could be entitled to.
We cover key topics such as how compensation payouts are calculated, the eligibility criteria to claim and what you can do to give your case the best chance of success.
In our final section, we look at the No Win No Fee contract offered by our panel of expert solicitors and what benefits making a clinical negligence claim under these terms can bring.
You can find out more about making a medical negligence claim and get a free eligibility assessment by talking to one of our advisors. Get in touch today using the details provided here:
- Call us on 0800 408 7826.
- Contact us online by completing our callback form.
- Use the live chat function on your screen now.
Select A Section
- How Much Could I Expect From A Medical Negligence Compensation Payout?
- Am I Eligible To Make A Claim?
- Can I Claim Against The NHS For Medical Negligence?
- Making Your Compensation Claim
- How Our Panel Of Solicitors Can Help You Get Compensation
- More Information
How Much Could I Expect From A Medical Negligence Compensation Payout?
There are two relevant heads of claim we need to discuss. These are:
- General damages, which compensates for the physical and psychological harm caused.
- Special damages, which accounts for financial losses. We’ll examine this head of claim in greater detail in the next section.
Your legal team can examine any provided medical documents in conjunction with the Judicial College Guidelines (JCG) in order to determine a possible general damages figure. The JCG document contains guideline compensation figures for various types of harm. We have taken some of these JCG figures and created this table for your reference.
Compensation Table
Please be advised that the first entry is not from the JCG and that this table has been included for guidance purposes only.
Type of Harm Caused Severity Guideline Compensation Figure Notes
Very Severe Harm together with Substantial Financial Losses Very Severe Up to £1,000,000 + Cases where very severe harm has been caused and significant financial losses, such as lost income, medical expenses, care and travel costs have been incurred.
Brain Damage Very Severe (a) £344,150 to £493,000 Little to no response to environment or langauge function necessitating around the clock nursing care.
Moderately Severe (b) £267,340 to £344,150 Very serious disability, whether physical or cognitive, resulting in a substantial dependence on others.
Female Reproductive System Infertility with Complications (a) £140,210 to £207,260 Sexual dysfunction, severe depression and anxiety with physical pain and scarring.
Permanent Sexual Dysfunction (b) £52,490 to £124,620 Permanent sexual dysfunction in a person with children or who would never have had them.
Chest Injuries Traumatic Injury (b) £80,240 to £122,850 Traumatic injury causing permanent disability, damage and functional impairment with a reduced life expectancy.
Damage to Chest (c) £38,210 to £66,920 Damage to the chest and one or both lungs with some continuing disability.
Back Injuries Moderate (b)(i) £33,880 to £47,320 Cases involving a lesser degree of residual disability. Examples include compression fractures of the lumbar where there is a substantial risk of osteoarthritis.
Scarring to Other Parts of The Body Multiple Noticeable Scars or a Single Disfiguring Scar £9,560 to £27,740 Cases where there is one disfiguring scar to the limbs, hands or torso, or several noticeable lacerations.
No Significant Internal Injury In the region of £10,550 Where an explatory laparotomy has been performed but no significant internal injury found.
Special Damages
This is the second head of claim and compensates for the financial harm caused by the medical negligence. This head of claim accounts for both past and future losses, and aims to quantify the impact on your daily life. What this means is compensation payouts for special damages tend to be much higher than anything paid out for general damages.
Examples of costs you could claim include:
- Loss of current and future earnings due to being off work or working reduced hours due to the harm caused.
- Medical expenses: including private treatment, prescriptions, and therapy sessions.
- Care costs: you could get domestic support for tasks such as cooking, cleaning, maintenance and other tasks in and around the home that you are unable to safely carry out on by yourself.
- Home modifications: if your mobility has been affected, you may require accessibility modifications such as ramps, modified showers or fall alarms.
- Travel expenses: when you’ve been medically advised to, or are unable to drive to and from your place of work, you could claim for public transportation.
Make sure to hold onto copies of any documents, such as payslips, travel tickets, prescriptions and bills for care as evidence of any financial harm you experience.
This section is intended to serve as guidance only. Since every claim is valued on a case-by-case basis, we cannot provide exact compensation figures. You can get a free assessment of your eligibility from our advisors at any time. If eligible, then a solicitor from our panel could take on your claim and provide a more personalised estimate of your potential compensation. Get in touch today using the details below.
Am I Eligible To Make A Claim?
Every medical professional, regardless of their field or level of experience, has a duty of care to anyone they are providing care to. This duty of care, meaning a legal responsibility for another’s wellbeing, is to provide medical care that meets the correct standard.
Failing to uphold this duty can result in patients experiencing avoidable harm. That is to say, harm that would not have occurred had the correct standards been upheld. A breach of duty that causes avoidable harm is deemed medical negligence.
We have summarised the eligibility criteria:
- You were owed a duty of care by a medical professional.
- This duty was breached in some way.
- That breach resulted in you experiencing avoidable harm.
You can get a free eligibility assessment today by talking to our advisors. Our team are available 24/7 via the details given below.
Can I Claim Against The NHS For Medical Negligence?
You can. The medical professional’s duty of care applies to both public and private healthcare providers, although the way you claim against the NHS will be slightly different to claiming against a private clinic or hospital.
How Medical Negligence Claims Affect The NHS
In short, it won’t. Many people have reservations about claiming against NHS services due to worries about affecting frontline care, or impacting staff. Claims against the NHS are managed by NHS Resolution, an arms length body of the Department of Health.
What this means is that any compensation that is awarded in clinical negligence claims is not taken directly from hospitals or other NHS providers. If you would like to know more about making an NHS claim, talk to our team today.
Making Your Compensation Claim
You should have a reasonable idea of how much compensation for medical negligence is awarded in different cases now. This section examines some key aspects you need to be aware of when making a claim.
What Evidence Will I Need?
Proving a medical negligence claim will require supporting evidence. Examples of such proof you could use include:
- Medical records showing what treatment you received and how it fell below expected standards. This can include examination notes, copies of scans or test results, and your personal medical records.
- Copies of any letters or other correspondence sent between you and your healthcare provider.
- Persons who saw the care you received or anyone who attended an appointment with you could provide a witness statement. Be sure you have their current contact details so a statement can be taken during the claims process.
- Any findings from the Bolam test if used.
The Bolam test is applied in certain medical negligence cases. The test involves relevantly trained medical professionals assessing the level of care you received and determining whether or not the correct standards were met. You don’t need to worry about organising this test yourself, but if it is used, any findings can be very useful evidence in your claim.
How Long Your Claim Could Take
This really depends on how complex your claim is and how smoothly the process goes. While our panel of expert solicitors aim to have any claim they handle completed as soon as possible, there are factors outside of their control which can increase the time frame.
For example:
- More serious harm, or cases involving multiple complications, can take longer to properly assess.
- There could be delays in securing medical evidence from healthcare providers.
- Whether or not the defendants admit liability straight away.
- If the claim ends up going to trial.
You can find out more about how long claiming in your specific circumstances could take by talking to our advisors.
How Our Panel Of Solicitors Can Help You Get Compensation
How much compensation for medical negligence could you receive? This is influenced by various factors. Our dedicated panel of solicitors can provide specialist support from start to finish to give your claim the best possible chance of success, and help you understand the ins and outs of making a medical negligence claim.
While there is no legal requirement to instruct a solicitor, there are some definite benefits to doing so. We have set out just some of these benefits below.
A solicitor could:
- Determine a fair and accurate compensation figure.
- Help you gather a strong body of supporting evidence.
- Negotiate with the defendant’s solicitors on your behalf.
- Break through the legal language barrier and explain all the jargon you’re going to encounter.
- Ensure all court instructions and deadlines are met.
- Instruct a barrister to represent you if the claim ends up going to court.
Our panel of solicitors offer their services to eligible claimants on strict No Win No Fee terms with a type of contract called a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA). By instructing a legal representative under a CFA, you will benefit from not having to pay any solicitors’ fees at the start or during the claim. You will also not pay these fees if the claim fails.
If you do win the claim, you will receive medical negligence compensation. A small success fee will be taken from this by the solicitor before the remainder is sent on to you. These fees are subject to a legally binding cap by The Conditional Fee Agreements Order 2013 and are agreed upon in advance. This means that from the very beginning, you know the majority of any payout is yours to keep.
Contact Us
To find out more about how medical negligence compensation is calculated or to ask any questions that you may have, get in touch with our team today. Our advisors are available 24/7 to provide additional guidance and offer a free eligiblity assessment.
Contact the team via:
- Call us on 0800 408 7826.
- Contact us online by completing our callback form.
- Use the live chat function on your screen now.
More Information
You can read some of our claims guides on different topics here:
- Find out how much compensation for a retained placenta you could receive.
- Learn more about what you could claim for a broken forearm after a third party breached their duty of care.
- Check our guide to suing the council after an accident here.
We have also included these external resources for additional information:
- You can read the standard for Good Medical Practice from the General Medical Council on their website.
- Read the guidance on Never events from NHS England.
- Find out more about how NHS Resolution manage claims here.
Thank you for taking the time to read our guide on how much compensation for medical negligence you could receive.