THE cost of health negligence in Huddersfield and Halifax totalled over £11m in the last four years.
Some £11,110,454 was spent fighting and paying claims against the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust, which runs the Royal Infirmary at Lindley and the Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax, since 2001.
The money was paid out by the NHS Litigation Authority.
The organisation is responsible for handling negligence claims made against trusts in England. The Calderdale and Huddersfield trust contributes to the authority, but the payouts would not affect the local budget.
Obstetrics accounts for 30% of the payouts, followed by paediatrics at 12%. Accident and emergency make up 10% of the cash burden.
The figure includes more than £7m in compensation for people who have suffered, as well as £1.5m in hospital defence costs and over £2m in legal costs for claimants.
A spokesman for the trust said they accepted the figures, which were in line with any acute hospital trust offering the same services.
He said the trust worked to national safety guidelines, which were regularly updated to try and prevent further incidents which could lead to claims.
Total claims are split into two sections. The first is made up of claims for the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts, which covers clinical claims where the incident happened after April 1, 1995.
The second section is the Existing Liabilities Scheme, which covers claims relating to earlier incidents.
The Clinical Negligence Scheme is a voluntary contribution- based membership scheme operated by the NHS Litigation Authority to which all hospital and GP trusts in England currently belong.
The ELS scheme is paid for by the Government's Department of Health.
In 2004-05, some 5,609 claims of clinical negligence and 3,766 claims of non-clinical negligence against NHS bodies were received by the NHS Litigation Authority.
This compares with 6,251 claims of clinical negligence and 3,819 claims of non-clinical negligence in 2003-04.
Nationally, a huge £502.9m was paid out in connection with clinical negligence claims in 2004-05. This includes both compensation paid to patients and the legal costs borne by the NHS. In 2003-04, the comparable figure was £422.5m.
