Do I have a claim?

Do I have a claim?

If you or the person who suffered substandard medical treatment underwent such treatment in an NHS Trust Hospital, it will be the NHS Trust who owe you a duty of care.

If the treatment you are complaining about was carried out on a private basis, you may have a claim against your private consultant or the private hospital.

As a general rule, you can only claim compensation if we can show that someone else was at fault and that this caused your accident and injuries.

Virtually all personal injury compensation claims are settled out of Court. However, the person against whom you are claiming is still referred to as the Defendant and we will always need to consider what a Judge would decide if your case did go to Court.

The first task is to obtain funding to enable a claim to be investigated. We offer Conditional Fee Agreement (No Win No Fee Agreement) and we can offer delegated After the Event (ATE) insurance with deferred premium (payable at the end of the case) to protect you against any adverse costs.

Medical Records

Once funding is in place, we will apply for all relevant medical records. As soon as the medical records are received they will be read, reviewed, collated, indexed and paginated. Stephanie Prior, a former nurse, is able to consider and review medical records with ease.

Medical Reports

An appropriate medical expert will then be instructed to review the medical records and advise on the standard of care that you or another received whilst under the care of the potential Defendant (s).

If the report confirms that there was substandard care, the medical expert will also be instructed to comment on causation, i.e. whether the substandard care caused the eventual outcome. Often several reports are required on issues relating to breach of duty and causation depending on the complexity of your case.

Letter of Claim

Once all of the expert evidence has been finalized, a Letter of Claim will then be drafted to the potential Defendant. The Letter of Claim will set out the facts of your case, the reasons why we allege negligence and the causal affects of that negligence. The Letter of Claim will also set out as much information as possible in relation to the potential value of the claim.

Letter of Response

The Defendant(s) will have 4 months in which to serve a Letter of Response.

The Defendant(s) may admit liability. If so, further medical evidence may be required before the case can be valued.

The Defendant(s) may deny liability. The Letter of Claim will be sent to our medical expert for consideration and a meeting with a barrister will be organized to discuss the next steps of your case.

How we can help

We can provide you with advice on medical claims and we offer a free consultation to evaluate the circumstances of your case and to help you understand whether or not you have a compensation claim once you have exhausted the NHS Complaints procedure.

We can also provide you with information in respect of care and case support services, details of support groups, welfare advice services and other financial services.