No Win No Fee Personal Injury Claims
No-win, No-fee claims
If you’ve been injured in an accident that occurred because someone who had a duty of care towards you breached this duty, you may be able to claim compensation for your suffering.
Excellent Reviews On
Expert Guidance On No Win No Fee Medical Negligence Claims
100% No Win No Fee
If you’ve suffered harm or injury at the hands of a medical professional, you may be able to make a medical negligence claim for pain and suffering and any permanent impact this medical treatment has had on your daily life.
Excellent Reviews On
As featured in:
Medical negligence claims share some similarities with personal injury claims, which you may be familiar with. Medical professionals are not immune to making a mistake or error of judgement, even with all their specialist skills and training. Medical negligence law means that they owe you a duty of care and if they breach this, you could be entitled to claim compensation.
A medical negligence claim can involve anything from a failure to diagnose to prescribing the wrong medication. Medical negligence involves all types of medical practitioners, not just doctors, and affects many patients who are receiving new or ongoing medical treatment.
This page details everything you need to know about making a medical negligence claim using specialist medical negligence solicitors. You’ll find out what the claims process involves and how much compensation you could be awarded.
We’ll explain clearly what a medical negligence claim is and how you can start legal action with the help of our No Win No Fee solicitors.
If you’d like to find out more and learn whether your medical issue qualifies as a medical negligence claim, then call us for an eligibility check at the number at the top of this page. You can also send us a message via our live chat.
Our advice is free, so there are no legal costs. We provide access to expert lawyers who can quickly evaluate your case to see if you have suffered medical negligence.
Call Our Medical Negligence Solicitors Today to Start Your Free Claim
What Is A Medical Negligence Claim?
Let’s start by looking at the definition of medical negligence and what’s involved in a clinical negligence claim.
Medical or clinical negligence claims are a specialist area, similar to claiming compensation for an injury in a car accident which wasn’t your fault or bringing a compensation claim against your employer for an accident at work.
Common amongst all these scenarios is that a third party owes a duty of care to you, which forms the basis of medical negligence claims. In a medical negligence case, the duty of care owed to you by a medical professional must have been breached.
Medical negligence can occur when a medical professional fails to provide acceptable care, causing harm or injury. This includes anything from diagnosis to treatment.
Medical negligence compensation claims are, by their very definition, specialist, requiring expert knowledge of both law and medicine. That’s why it’s essential to instruct specialist medical negligence solicitors to represent you.
What Types Of Negligent Treatment Constitute A Medical Negligence Claim?
Medical negligence claims can take many forms. Some of the most common cases seen by medical negligence lawyers include: –
- Failure to diagnose – this means missing a health problem on a single or repeated occasion and can involve one or more medical practitioners
- Misdiagnosis – diagnosing an illness, disease or medical condition as something else, often meaning the wrong treatment is instigated or correct treatment is delayed, leading to a more serious condition
- Delayed diagnosis – a failure to diagnose within a reasonable timeframe, leading to delayed medical treatment and potentially a worsening of the illness or disease
- Delayed treatment – often hand-in-hand with delayed diagnosis, but this can be caused by other medical mistakes and systemic failures
- Inadequate care and attention – this is a ‘catch-all’ and covers all types of medical care and attention in a vast variety of circumstances within the health sector
- A failure to provide treatment – again, this involves an almost endless variety of scenarios and situations and could be a medical mistake attributed to one individual or a series of organisational failures
Medical negligence claims include new illnesses, diseases or injuries. Medical negligence cases also cover failure to manage existing conditions, leading to further pain and suffering, life-changing and permanent impairments and disabilities and, sadly, in extreme cases, premature or wrongful death.
Why use us?
Free Consultation
We offer a free consultation to anyone looking to make a claim
No win, no fee
Claim experts
We use solicitors who have handled thousands of claims
Why Make A Medical Negligence Claim?
Medical practitioners hold a well-deserved and vital place in society. We all value medical care. However, doctors and nurses are only human, and sometimes, they can make medical mistakes.
People are often reluctant to bring medical negligence claims against what is called ‘the caring profession’ or feel concerned that the area is too complex and specialist for them to have any hope of succeeding. They might also worry that there will be expensive legal fees.
If you take legal advice and bring a clinical negligence claim with our medical negligence solicitors on a no win no fee basis, you won’t have to pay anything upfront. You’ll only pay legal fees if your claim is successful, so there is absolutely no financial risk to you.
A no win no fee medical negligence claim is designed to compensate you for pain and suffering incurred because of a breach of a duty of care owed to you when you were receiving treatment for illness or injury.
Financial compensation is based on your experience and the impact of a delayed diagnosis or medical mistake, and it should put you back in the position you were in before you experienced harm.
A medical negligence claim is also designed to compensate you for financial losses. These might include a temporary or permanent inability to work, loss of income, and additional medical expenses. Life-changing events could mean the cost of adaptations to your home and ongoing care.
If you require more treatment because of medical negligence, then your lawyer can arrange for this to be done privately, minimising long waiting periods. The cost of this forms part of your medical negligence claim.
With a no win no fee claim, you will enter a conditional fee agreement. This fee agreement means you will only pay legal costs if your medical negligence claim is successful. Your medical negligence solicitors’ costs are taken from your compensation award, then you receive the rest.
How Common Are Medical Negligence Cases?
An organisation called NHS Resolution gathers and collates data on medical negligence claims. According to NHS Resolution data, 15,078 new claims were made in 2021/2022, with the total amount spent on claims coming to £2.5 billion.
Interestingly, the highest number of claims was in emergency medicine, with a total of 1,233 new claims. Not far behind was orthopaedic surgery, with 1,203 new claims, and obstetrics (the care of mothers and babies during birth), with 1,055 new cases, excluding cerebral palsy and brain damage.
General surgery and gynaecology averaged around 750 new claims, and all other areas of medicine ranked at under 500 new clinical claims.
The amount spent on settling claims has been increasing steadily over the years. In 2006/07, the total was £581.7 million, rising to £2.4 billion in 2021/22. Not only were emergency medicine, orthopaedic surgery, and birth injury claims responsible for the highest number of new cases, but the settlement values were also correspondingly high, reflecting the risks associated with these areas of medicine.
The highest-value payouts law firms see in the medical negligence sector relate to paediatric medicine, specifically brain damage and cerebral palsy. This is because when things go wrong with babies and infants, some children will require lifelong care, reflected in the compensation for birth injuries.
What Kind Of Things Can I Claim For?
The range of medical negligence claims is vast and diverse. However, any medical negligence solicitor will tell you that most cases are concentrated in certain areas, such as paediatrics and emergency medicine.
The consequences of medical negligence can range from temporary and short-lived impacts like an infection to life-changing events such as sepsis, a heart attack and brain damage. It covers situations when a medical professional has made an error or failed to provide an appropriate standard of care. This can mean a patient’s condition worsens or there is additional illness or injury.
Examples of medical negligence in the community include your GP misdiagnosing your illness, meaning a severe condition is not found quickly enough and worsens, or an event happens, like a stroke or heart attack. Your GP may fail to administer the correct medication, or there could be a problem with the dose, which may cause or worsen illnesses and health conditions.
In a hospital, you can claim for injuries or illnesses that are the result of failed treatment, inadequate monitoring and hospital-acquired infections. Treatment failures can be caused by frontline medical professionals or even something as straightforward as the incorrect recording of test results or misplaced medical records by support staff.
Medical negligence claims extend into the care sector and also cover other medical professionals, such as dentists, opticians, midwives, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and cosmetic procedures in clinics and beauty salons
How Does The Claims Process Work?
The claims process begins with an evaluation of your complaint by our expert legal team to establish that you have a valid compensation claim and that your case falls within the three-year time limit.
Once this has been done, the legal process begins with a detailed assessment of your complaint and collating all the evidence, including your personal statement of what happened, witness statements, photographs, and all your medical records, including hospital and GP notes.
This data is subject to a thorough review by our expert medical negligence team to locate the specific occasions that resulted in loss or injury and who is responsible. Often, more than one party is involved.
We’ll need to be able to identify and prove that your treatment was substandard, wrong or absent, and because of this, you have suffered injury and financial loss. We use discipline-specific medical experts to provide commentary on what happened to support your claim.
Once your case has been formalised, we contact the NHS Trust or medical professionals responsible with a detailed ‘Letter of Claim’ which sets out what happened and the allegations of negligence against them.
The defendant has a set period of time to investigate the claim and issue their response, which could be either a denial or an admission of liability. Cases are not always clear-cut, so if an agreement cannot be reached, your case may require further investigation. However, sometimes, to avoid additional cost and a long-drawn-out process, the defendant or their insurer may agree to settle and not admit liability.
A ‘without prejudice’ claim offer is where the defendant offers settlement for a claim without admitting liability for injury or losses because it’s ultimately more cost-effective to do this than go to court with a lengthy dispute and spiralling legal fees.
We always discuss settlement offers with you; it’s your decision at the end of the day.
How Much Compensation Could I Receive For A Medical Negligence Claim?
The amount of compensation awarded will depend on the type of injury and its severity and the amount of pain and suffering you have experienced. Generally, more severe injuries receive higher payouts.
Each medical negligence claim is evaluated case-by-case, as every claim will have unique circumstances. To help guide the courts and keep compensation awards consistent, the legal profession and the judiciary use the Judicial College Guidelines. This document provides a range of monetary values for different injuries and diseases.
Here are some examples of the financial awards you could receive for different types of injuries caused by medical negligence.
- Failure to correctly diagnose a fracture to the leg and from which an incomplete recovery is made, leaving you with impaired mobility, a limp or sensory loss, could receive an award between £21,920 and £31,880
- Lack of supervision in recovery following a medical procedure or failure to offer adequate support in a care home environment leading to a fall and a fractured arthritic femur or hip requiring a replacement could mean you receive a compensation award of between £47,810 and £64,070
- A failure in hospital systems to check medication leading to an allergic reaction which causes significant discomfort, stomach cramps and fatigue with hospital admission for several days could result in compensation of between £4,820 and £11,640
- Scarring following a cosmetic procedure which has gone wrong and is described as ‘less severe’ in nature but where the disfigurement is still substantial, and there has been a significant psychological reaction, could receive a payout of between £21,920 and £59,090
- Severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following clinical negligence which stops you from working or functioning at anything approaching the pre-trauma level could receive a compensation award of between £73,050 and £122,850
Will I Receive Compensation If I Lose Income Because I Cannot Go Back To Work?
Special damages are another type of financial compensation available to claimants as part of a successful medical negligence claim. They include quantifiable losses which arise as a result of clinical negligence and include the following: –
- Loss of income caused by an inability to work, a permanent change of role because of an injury caused by a medical mistake, or injuries which prohibit a return to work. Special damages can cover reduced income whilst you are on sick leave if you claim Statutory Sick Pay and don’t have an employer sickness scheme
- Short and long-term medical expenses, including diagnostic tests, therapies like physiotherapy, private treatment, and medical report fees
- Transportation costs if you are unable to drive and need to use public transport or taxis to attend appointments
- Adaptations to your home caused by a life-changing medical negligence event, including things like installing lifts or stairways, altering accommodation for ground floor use only or the provision of mobility aids and other types of assistance
Compensation Bracket: 0.00
How No Win No Fee Solicitors Co Can Help You Claim Compensation
If you want to make a claim for medical treatment that’s gone wrong or negligent treatment for a disease, illness, or injury, then it’s essential to work with an experienced medical negligence solicitor. We are expert No Win No Fee medical negligence solicitors with a skilled legal team that specialises in cases of medical mistake and malpractice.
The clue’s in the name! We offer expert advice via a conditional fee agreement. This means you only pay legal costs if you win compensation, from a free initial consultation to your day in court if it comes to that.
Conditional fee agreements are structured so that you don’t pay any legal fees unless you win, so there is no risk to you. This means everyone has access to legal advice if they have experienced medical negligence; it’s not just reserved for those who can pay upfront for legal representation.
If you’d like to check if you can make a personal injury claim for medical negligence then call us on the number above, write to us here, or message us now via our live chat box. We’re always happy to help.
No Win No Fee Medical Negligence Claims FAQs
Here are the answers to some common questions regarding medical negligence claims.
Can I bring a medical negligence claim for negligent treatment during cosmetic surgery?
Providing your medical negligence team can establish that the procedure and aftercare given fell below the accepted industry standard, then you will be able to bring a claim against the surgeon whether they are an NHS doctor or a private consultant. If you elect to have cosmetic surgery privately, you should always check that your surgeon is insured. Their insurance company will pay the costs of any legal claim and a compensation award.
Do medical negligence claims include claims against NHS and private hospitals?
Doctors have an overarching duty of care to all their patients, whether they see and treat them under the NHS or within a private clinic or hospital. People often think there needs to be a financial contract in place to make a compensation claim, but you can also claim for medical mistakes and clinical negligence within the NHS.
Do medical negligence claims include compensation for mental health issues?
Many people suffer mental health problems after a missed diagnosis or the wrong medical treatment. As part of your compensation claim, your expert medical negligence team will include any immediate and ongoing mental health problems like stress, anxiety, depression and even Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) caused by medical negligence.
Can I make a no win no fee medical negligence claim for treatment abroad which has gone wrong?
Medical practitioners have a duty of care to their patients wherever in the world they practise. You may be able to make a medical negligence claim if you received medical treatment outside the UK. However, these cases are usually much more complex and require expert medical negligence solicitors. The claim could be made outside the English legal system, so your legal team will consist of lawyers in the UK and an international law firm in the country where your treatment took place. Insurance may also be a problem here.
Is there a time limit to make a medical negligence claim?
You must usually start a medical negligence claim within three years of negligent treatment. This is called the three-year rule and applies to any claim. Usually, the three years run from the treatment date, but clinical negligence or malpractice sometimes becomes apparent later. In this case, the three years run from when you became aware of the negligence. The three-year rule doesn’t apply to children and young people under 18. The time limit for minors starts to run once they reach their 18th birthday. There are no time limits for people who lack mental capacity.
Can I make a claim for clinical negligence compensation if the patient has already died?
Yes, you can. The claim will need to be made by the deceased’s Personal Representatives, such as the executors if there is a will or the administrators if that person died without leaving a will. Any compensation payout will be made to the deceased’s estate and can help with funeral expenses as well as provide financial security if there are dependent children involved. It’s important to remember that the solicitors you are using for probate may not be specialist no win no fee solicitors with expertise in medical negligence claims. Different law firms offer different specialisms.
Can I make a claim for an infant who suffered life-changing birth injuries?
Obstetrics is one of the most common areas for medical negligence claims. If your child has suffered temporary or permanent injuries during birth, then you can start a claim now or wait if you are unsure about how the birth injuries may impact their life in the future. Remember, the three-year time limit doesn’t start to run until they reach their eighteenth birthday. You will have to bring the claim on your child’s behalf and will be referred to as a ‘Litigation Friend’ because they are too young to bring a claim in their own right.
How long does it take to obtain compensation in medical negligence claims?
Medical negligence claims are some of the most complex. Even a straightforward case that is not contested can take between eighteen months and two years to reach a final settlement. If the claim is disputed and you have to go to Court, then that can double the length of time to between three and four years. Sometimes, injuries are ongoing or, in the case of infants, yet to fully develop which is why some claims take so much longer. It is possible to obtain an interim award for compensation if liability is agreed, even if the final amount of compensation has yet to be decided. This will allow you to get private medical treatment or compensate you for loss of earnings so you don’t suffer hardship whilst you wait for the case to be fully settled.
Should I use a Solicitor for my medical negligence compensation claim?
Even a straightforward claim can be complicated and daunting, but with medical negligence cases, it is only possible to progress with an expert medical negligence solicitor. If you want to protect yourself from upfront legal costs and court fees, working with a legal professional on a no win no fee agreement is essential.
