Page 34 - Pharmacy Appeals 1/4/04 to 31/3/05

10 Performance report

Chief Executive's report

2021/22 marks the final year of our five-year strategy, 'Delivering fair resolution and
learning from harm', and sets the scene for our strategy for the next three years.
Our new strategy sets out how we will continue to build on the progress made

and as such it does not represent a fundamental change in direction.

We are also more frequently taking the decision to
pursue a custodial sentence through contempt of
court proceedings for those who bring exaggerated
or fabricated claims as described at page 42.
Our Early Notification (EN) Scheme for obstetric cerebral
palsy is singled out as an exemplar of our upstream
approach and progress is reported from page 30. This is
an innovation which aims to demonstrate over time that
early intervention can bring benefits for all those affected
by negligent care, as well as real time improvements in
safety and, ultimately, reductions in associated costs. As
the EN Scheme reaches a tipping point, where the cases
investigated in the first year would have been expected
to reach us under the traditional model, we plan to
evaluate the scheme to inform its future development.
As with any strategy, critical to our success has been
the need to adapt rapidly to the unexpected. In 2018
This is because we believe that the central tenet of
we were asked to deliver new indemnity schemes for
an upstream approach to resolving the things that
general practice. At pages 36 and 37 of our report we
are our core business, namely compensation claims,
describe how these new schemes, which involved the
performance concerns and contracting disputes,
Government's acquisition of historical claims as well
continues to hold true. Both we and those we work
as responsibility for new ones, have led to a growing
with can have the most impact by learning from what
portfolio. The main scheme - Clinical Negligence Scheme
happened to prevent a recurrence and by taking
for General Practice - will, as expected, gather pace as
action to prevent an issue escalating unnecessarily
more and more incidents fall within its scope. The general
into distressing and expensive formal processes.
practice schemes are now feeding more substantially
The issues we deal with are complex and the initiatives into our reporting on clinical claims, providing a more
we have launched during the last five years have been complete picture of clinical negligence in the NHS. For
aimed at long term and sustainable change. We have example, at page 36 we illustrate how claims in secondary
worked hard to achieve a shift in adversarial environment care have fallen in number (our Clinical Negligence
to one where formal litigation has fallen year on year to Scheme for Trusts) but how the addition of the new
an all-time low, and where dispute resolution outside general practice schemes means that our incoming and
of the court system or other formal processes is no
settled clinical claims numbers are rising overall. This
longer exceptional or novel. This has not resulted in a
entails increased activity by our organisation, particularly
less rigorous approach. As set out at page 36 of this
when coupled with the acceleration of investigations
report we continue to resolve a high and increasing
under our EN Scheme by several years. We have laid
number of claims without payment of damages,
the groundwork to manage this increased workload
preserving millions of pounds of public funds, while
with a planned expansion of our workforce and two
resolving claims where compensation is due fairly and
major change programmes in claims management and
as quickly as we can. In addition, as we illustrate on
IT. We aim to make the very most of the opportunities
pages 40 to 42 of this report, we also continue to bring
presented by our expanded remit to drive efficiencies
our more than 25 years' expertise in healthcare claims
and improvements to our services across the board.
to the management of cases in the higher courts which
determine the boundaries of the law in the future.