Your Guide To Who You Can Claim Against
You can make a claim against any healthcare provider who has caused you an injury or provided negligent diagnosis, care or treatment. This includes:
Last updated on January 18th, 2024 at 02:00 pm
- NHS
- Private healthcare providers
- Doctors
- Nurses
- Dentists
- Midwives
- Health visitors
- Physiotherapists
- Mental health care providers
- Opticians
- The ambulance service
Claiming Against a Hospital
If you’ve suffered as a result of negligent care in a hospital, you may be able to make a medical negligence compensation claim.
What types of injuries can I claim for?
Claims against hospitals can be made for a wide variety of reasons including:
- Surgical mistakes
- Misdiagnosis
- Failure to diagnose
- Delayed treatment
- Hospital infections/hygiene issues
- Accident and emergency department mistakes
- Mistakes on medical charts leading to incorrect treatment
- Prescription errors
With the sheer number of treatments available these days it’s impossible to list all the different types of injuries that can be caused by negligent medical care.
Please look at our other pages for more detail on some of the common types of claims. If your type of injury isn’t listed, please contact us and speak to one of our experienced lawyers who will discuss your case in detail and advise you on the strength of your claim.
Will my future care be affected if I make a claim against a hospital?
Your hospital doesn’t have the right to refuse to treat you simply because you have brought a claim against it, although in practice you may feel more comfortable seeking an alternative health care provider.
At a hospital, this may mean asking to be treated by a different doctor or being referred elsewhere.
Read how Nikki Yavari won compensation for an elderly woman with dementia when she injured herself in hospital.
Read how the head of our clinical negligence team, Carol Simpson, won £10,000 in compensation for a woman who suffered negligent treatment in hospital.
Claiming Against a GP
If you’ve suffered as a result of negligence on the part of your doctor (general practitioner or GP), you may be able to make a medical negligence compensation claim.
In the UK our NHS system is generally very good, but occasionally mistakes are made. Some GPs can see over 100 patients in a week and as a result, are only able to spend a few minutes with each one.
Many mistakes do not have serious consequences, but in some cases, unfortunately, the results can be serious.
We have experience of dealing with a variety of medical negligence cases against doctors.
What types of claims can be made against GPs?
The most common types of claims against GPs are:
- Misdiagnosis – some serious illnesses can have similar symptoms to less serious ones and can, therefore, be incorrectly diagnosed. For example, meningitis is sometimes misdiagnosed as flu due to the common symptoms that both illnesses share in the early stages.
- Failure to diagnose
- Delayed treatment or failure to treat
- Incorrect treatment
- Failure to refer to a specialist
- Prescription errors – mistakes are sometimes made when prescribing drugs and people can be given inappropriate medicines. Another common problem is when serious side effects of drugs are not made clear to patients.
Will it affect my future care if I claim against my GP?
Your GP doesn’t have the right to refuse to treat you simply because you have brought a claim against him/her, although in practice you may feel more comfortable in seeking an alternative health care provider. This can be a simple process of changing practice or simply seeing a different doctor within the same practice.
Claiming Against a Dentist
If you’ve suffered as a result of negligence on the part of your dentist, you may be able to make a medical negligence compensation claim.
Dentists, like all health care professionals, owe us a duty of care to provide the proper treatment in the proper manner. Unfortunately, mistakes are made by dentists that can cause pain and suffering to patients and in some cases serious long term effects.
Whether you have been treated on the NHS or privately and whether the dental work was medical or cosmetic, you have a right to claim compensation if you have suffered as a result of the care you received.
What are the most common claims against dentists?
We have experience in dealing with a variety of dental negligence cases. The most common types of claims against dentists involve:
- Failure to diagnose – failure to see a problem that can cause the condition to worsen if no treatment is carried out
- Misdiagnosis – this can involve either failure to carry out necessary work or carrying out incorrect work
- Injury during treatment – mistakes made during dental procedures can cause injury such as nerve damage, which can lead to long term problems
- Drug usage errors – giving the wrong drug can cause problems including allergic reactions. Claims may also be pursued when the wrong amount of a drug has been administered
- Unnecessary work / unnecessary removal of teeth
Read about how Graysons won compensation for a woman whose dentist removed the wrong tooth.
If you feel that you may have grounds for a claim against your dentist contact us to discuss the circumstances in more detail and we’ll be happy to advise you on the strength of your claim.
What can I claim?
The value of your claim – whoever it’s against – will depend on a number of factors including:
- The nature of the injury or illness
- Whether you recover fully from the injury or illness, or whether it has a long term effect on your health and wellbeing
- The amount of any losses you incur as a result of the injury
You can claim compensation for the following things if they are a result of your injury:
- Pain, suffering and loss of amenity
- Loss of earnings
- Medical and nursing care costs
- Special equipment needed to carry out daily activities and any costs involved in adapting your home
- Other expenses incurred as a result of your injury, for example, travel expenses incurred whilst receiving medical treatment.
We understand that deciding to make a claim against your GP may be difficult. Contact us to speak to one of our specialist lawyers in total confidence and they will discuss the details of your claim.
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