NHS 'failing on blood clot care'

 9 May 2011 Last updated at 23:26 ET By Michelle Roberts Health reporter, BBC News  Wearing compression stockings can prevent clots in the legs, known as DVT, and lungs Doctors failing to spot deadly blood clots have cost the NHS over ￡112m in legal claims since 2005, figures show.

The NHS Litigation Authority data reveals how much has been paid out to patients and their families as a result of medics failing to screen for or give treatments to prevent the condition.

Guidelines introduced early last year say all patients admitted to hospital should be screened for clot risk.

The charity Lifeblood says the figures should be a wake up call for hospitals.

It calculates unless more doctors follow best-practice guidelines, claims for the period 2005 to 2015 could exceed ￡250m.

Blood clots or venous thromboembolism (VTE) kill an estimated 25,000 people admitted to NHS wards in England every year.

But many of the deaths are avoidable with the right care.

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I expect organisations to assess every patient for their individual risk of getting a blood clot, and then to provide the appropriate prevention”

End Quote NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh However, an analysis of Department of Health data by Lifeblood shows just 30 of the UK's 159 Hospital Trusts in England are meeting the mandatory goal to risk-assess 90% of patients admitted to hospital.

This could mean as many as 4.5m patients are missing out on potentially life-saving assessments, says Lifeblood.

The charity's medical director, Professor Beverley Hunt, warned: "The NHS has some excellent new thrombosis prevention guidelines in place but if hospitals don't take urgent action to meet these mandatory prevention goals, then patients will increasingly turn to the courts for compensation."

NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh said: "We are committed to doing something about this issue, to reduce the suffering of thousands of people and to save many lives.

"This is not complicated. I expect organisations to assess every patient for their individual risk of getting a blood clot, and then to provide the appropriate prevention.

"Not only would this more than pay for itself; it is clearly the right thing to do."

Suit Accuses U.S. Government of Failing to Protect Earth for Generations Unborn

Similar lawsuits are to be filed against states around the country, according to the plaintiffs, a coalition of groups concerned about climate change called Our Children’s Trust.

Most of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, filed in United States District Court in San Francisco, are teenagers, a decision apparently made to underscore the intergenerational nature of the public trust that the earth’s atmosphere represents. More novel, however, is the suit’s reliance on the public trust doctrine, which dates to Roman times.

That doctrine has been invoked in cases involving the protection of Chicago’s lakefront and of Mono Lake in the Sierra Nevada.

But in some ways the suit parallels a current case, brought by several states against the five largest utilities in the country, that frames greenhouse gas emissions as a public nuisance, legal experts noted.

Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on issues in that case, including the standing of the states to bring such lawsuits. Several justices expressed skepticism: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, for example, questioned whether the courts were being asked to intervene in an arena in which the executive branch — specifically the Environmental Protection Agency — has the requisite expertise to act.

?The E.P.A. has determined that greenhouse gases pose a danger to the public health and welfare and are therefore subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. It has argued that this regulatory process, which is already under way, should not be pre-empted by the courts.

Legal experts interviewed on Wednesday said they were unsure whether the new lawsuit could gain legal traction, given that it presents issues that overlap in some ways with the public nuisance case. The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion on that case this spring.

Courts that hear these cases will be heavily influenced by the Supreme Court’s opinion, said Michael B. Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Center for Climate Change Law.

Mr. Gerrard said that by filing such lawsuits, environmentalists were “trying to use all available options in view of the failure of Congress” to act on greenhouse gas emissions. The House approved a sweeping bill to limit such emissions in 2009, but a more cautious effort died in the Senate last year. And the recently elected Republican majority in the House is threatening to strip the E.P.A. of regulatory powers related to global warming.

Lisa Heinzerling, an environmental law expert at Georgetown University, said of the new suit, “Part of this is keeping the issue alive in lots of different settings and having all the branches, including the courts, continually react to it.”

 

Suit Accuses U.S. Government of Failing to Protect Earth for Generations Unborn

Similar lawsuits are to be filed against states around the country, according to the plaintiffs, a coalition of groups concerned about climate change called Our Children’s Trust.

Most of the individual plaintiffs in the suit, filed in United States District Court in San Francisco, are teenagers, a decision apparently made to underscore the intergenerational nature of the public trust that the earth’s atmosphere represents. More novel, however, is the suit’s reliance on the public trust doctrine, which dates to Roman times.

That doctrine has been invoked in cases involving the protection of Chicago’s lakefront and of Mono Lake in the Sierra Nevada.

But in some ways the suit parallels a current case, brought by several states against the five largest utilities in the country, that frames greenhouse gas emissions as a public nuisance, legal experts noted.

Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on issues in that case, including the standing of the states to bring such lawsuits. Several justices expressed skepticism: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, for example, questioned whether the courts were being asked to intervene in an arena in which the executive branch — specifically the Environmental Protection Agency — has the requisite expertise to act.

?The E.P.A. has determined that greenhouse gases pose a danger to the public health and welfare and are therefore subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. It has argued that this regulatory process, which is already under way, should not be pre-empted by the courts.

Legal experts interviewed on Wednesday said they were unsure whether the new lawsuit could gain legal traction, given that it presents issues that overlap in some ways with the public nuisance case. The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion on that case this spring.

Courts that hear these cases will be heavily influenced by the Supreme Court’s opinion, said Michael B. Gerrard, director of Columbia University’s Center for Climate Change Law.

Mr. Gerrard said that by filing such lawsuits, environmentalists were “trying to use all available options in view of the failure of Congress” to act on greenhouse gas emissions. The House approved a sweeping bill to limit such emissions in 2009, but a more cautious effort died in the Senate last year. And the recently elected Republican majority in the House is threatening to strip the E.P.A. of regulatory powers related to global warming.

Lisa Heinzerling, an environmental law expert at Georgetown University, said of the new suit, “Part of this is keeping the issue alive in lots of different settings and having all the branches, including the courts, continually react to it.”