The State Claims Agency (SCA) requires an additional €50 million for clinical negligence cases this year due to an increase in the number of claims and value of settlements, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said.
The Minister was appearing before the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday to discuss this year’s supplementary health estimates, saying there was a need for additional funding of €1.754 billion for his department.
He said this supplementary estimate is inclusive of, not additional to, the permanent increase in funding of €1.5 billion for next year announced as part of the summer economic statement.
Mr Donnelly said the total allocation to the State Claims Agency for clinical negligence would be €485 million, which “can be attributed to an increase in the number of claims and an increase in the value of settlements awarded, particularly claims arising due to catastrophic birth injury”.
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“The core part of this is patient safety. There is a financial cost to it to the State as well. It’s about reducing harm and, where you can, eliminating harm to patients. In terms of catastrophic birth injuries, there is now a review group. They are now doing a root cause analysis review where there is a catastrophic birth injury.”
In recent weeks an interdepartmental working group on the rising cost of health-related claims published a report which found the estimated outstanding liability for healthcare claims in Ireland increased by 64 per cent between 2018 and 2022, from €2.8 billion to €4.6 billion, an average rise of some 13 per cent per year.
The transactional cost of claims has risen from €326 million in 2018 to €501 million in 2022, an increase of 54 per cent.
“This is despite an overall fall in the number of new claims annually and is primarily driven by a steep rise in the cost of damages in clinical catastrophic claims, which account for over 50 per cent of costs and just 2 per cent of new claims annually,” the report said.
Mr Donnelly said he wants “to bring these costs down”, but due to the time it takes for cases to work through the system “it will be a number of years before patient safety improvements will be seen in the reduction of payments”.
According to the Minister, around 60 per cent of the supplementary estimate is required for pay costs, excluding pensions “During 2024 the health sector has experienced significant increases in demand across all areas, with average volume increases of between 5 per cent and 10 per cent, particularly in our hospitals,” he said.
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