Sheffield health chiefs pay out more than £17m in damages for diagnosis issues.
According to new data, the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has paid out more than £17 million in diagnosis-related medical negligence claims in the last six years.
Medical Negligence Assist gathered figures from a series of Freedom of Information requests, revealing that 105 claims for failure or delay in diagnosis were filed against the trust between 2019/20 and 2024/25.
Of those, 69 lawsuits were successfully settled, with the trust awarding a total of £17,792,192 in damages. This amounts to an average compensation of £257,858 for each successful claimant in Sheffield, the highest average settlement in South Yorkshire.
Yearly data for Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust show that compensation expenses peaked in 2022/23, whereas the volume of lodged claims peaked in 2023/24, when £1,582,796 was paid on 30 lodged claims.
According to Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, the bulk of the claims paid involved a “failure or delay” in diagnosis, not a misdiagnosis.
When compared to other trusts in South Yorkshire, Sheffield has the highest total compensation bill. It is followed by Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which paid out £9,567,894.
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust paid £9,040,161, followed by Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, which received the lowest compensation in the region at £4,366,829.
South Yorkshire trusts faced 365 claims and paid out a total of £40,767,076 over a six-year period.
Sophie Cope, a medical negligence solicitor at Medical Negligence Assist, encouraged health officials to intervene.
“The figures highlight a deeply concerning trend that leaves patients paying the ultimate price,” she told reporters. “We regularly see cases where a delay in diagnosis leads to devastating, life-altering consequences.”
Nationally, the full scale of diagnostic errors offers a bleak picture. Over the course of six years, a total of 9,989 misdiagnosis claims were filed against NHS trusts nationwide.
A total of 7,500 claims were paid nationwide, costing the health sector £1,236,646,418, with an average award of £164,886 per successful claimant.
While numbers fell during the epidemic, they have already increased to a six-year high of 1,922 new claims in the fiscal year 2024/25 alone.
Jane McNicholas, Chief Medical Officer at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, commented on the figures, saying: “Over the six years quoted, we will have cared for over 10 million patients across our five hospitals and community services, and ensuring high-quality care is our top priority.
“The majority of the claims paid out in this period involve a failure or delay in diagnosis rather than a misdiagnosis, although we obviously do not want any patient to experience injury or delay, so we assess each incident and make improvements to prevent it from happening again.
“There is no average settlement figure because the £17 million is disproportionately influenced by a small number of historic higher value claims, and these figures also include claims that were paid several years after they occurred.”
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