Doncaster woman wins damages after botched hip surgery

Posted 05/10/2008

A Doncaster woman has been awarded compensation after a private clinic undertaking NHS surgery admitted that her hip surgery was carried out incorrectly.

Mrs B was admitted to an independent sector treatment centre (ISTC), one of a number contracted by the Department of Health to carry out NHS surgery. But the wound became infected and Mrs B underwent further surgery to have the prosthesis removed. A third operation was then necessary to fit a new prosthesis.

But the second prosthesis was wrongly positioned and so it too had to be removed, requiring yet more surgery. As a result, Mrs B suffers severely reduced mobility. She needs to use a stick to walk, has a permanent limp and cannot use stairs without supervision.

The ISTC treatment programme is part of a major government initiative to refocus health treatment. The programme was ostensibly introduced to shorten hospital waiting lists, but it has been controversial since its inception.

There is evidence that the real reason behind the move might have been specifically to introduce a strong tier of private healthcare as a competitor to what was seen as a moribund NHS system.

Sandra Patton is a member of Ashtons Legal’s clinical negligence team who has worked on a number of cases of botched surgery at ISTCs.

As a result of her experience she was asked to give evidence to both the House of Commons Select Committee on Health and the Healthcare Commission, both of which bodies investigated the problems involved with ISTCs.

‘The original ISTC progamme has been scaled down somewhat, but still we see these problems arising,’ Sandra Patton explains.

‘The department tried to instate ISTCs in a hurry and cut corners in setting up the contracts with healthcare providers. As a result, unsuitably qualified doctors were recruited from around the world on often very short-term contracts, and patients were too often the ones to pay the price.’