Sueing the health service & getting access to your records

luminated

A couple of months ago, after several months of heart problems, I suffered not just a 'life threatening' incident but did actually need to be resuscitated due to a cardiac arrest and thank goodness I was actually in hospital at that point.

Due to the emergency procedures/treatment, after the arrest, I am still in the 'advised' recovery period and feel I have suffered some permanent heart damage and cognitive issues which I can only put down to the heart having stopped albeit for only a short period of time.

So I am now feeling resentment and that there is little doubt, to me and my family, some of the medical staff didn't do the right thing by me.

So I am looking into whether I could successfully sue the hospital, how much it would cost and if there is any help for the legal costs or if any reputable firm of solicitors offer a 'no win no fee' service.

Also wondering if I can request my medical records from the hospital and who I make the request to.

And before anyone says anything about yet another person trying to get some compo - yes I bloody do want to try and get some money to make my already poor quality of life better for me but more so for my wife who is suffering more stress than me about the events.

teenee60

Good luck to you.
I did just that, what some 12 years ago,its a long drawn out process,just short of 4 years in my case,i did settle out of court,on soliciters advise.Nothing near what i expected in £'s,i had a operation that went badly wrong.
I still belive the solicitors carried on with the case until my insurance policy £'s was running out,appointments at guy's hospital,meetings with barristers in london etc.

Get in touch with a good solicitor they will get your records,i think its a nominal £10

So do consider the stress factor,its not nice.

Parva

I'm currently engaged in a long-term case against my ex-GP who I believe was negligent in at least sending me for an xray after 8 years of complaining about leg pains culminating in ever increasing doses of pain-killers and tranquillisers and leading to the eventual amputation of the entire leg and a good portion of pelvis to boot due to bone cancer when it was discovered after my femur broke as I came off a waterslide in Cyprus in October 2011.

Your best bet would be to speak to one of the no win - no fee solicitors or get a free 30 minute appointment with a local solicitor. Getting full medical records from your GP entails paying £50, I'm unsure what it would cost to also get records from the hospital. In my case, my solicitors have requested records from my old GP, new GP, physiotherapist, current hospital doctor and records from the hospital where I had the surgery.

I would get some advice before you decide to persue this, it's a looong drawn out battle.

GlasweJen

Hospital records are £50 per hospital.

Lum

Except for when the hospital just ignores all requests to provide them, which has been our status for nearly a year now in a claim over c.diff.

Anyone know how you deal with that one?

Anubis_2

Lum wrote: »

Except for when the hospital just ignores all requests to provide them, which has been our status for nearly a year now in a claim over c.diff.

Anyone know how you deal with that one?

Yes, I would contact a solicitor and let them request them.

Lum

Anubis wrote: »

Yes, I would contact a solicitor and let them request them.

Our solicitor has been on the case for nearly a year now, and is getting nowhere. They just completely ignore his requests.

luminated

Thank you all so much for your help for which I am most grateful.

I have bottled the matter up since the 'event' (as I have nicknamed it!) and now feel I need to get it out in the open with my wife and best friends.

Part of me says forget it 'mistakes are made' even though I could of paid the ultimate price. Part of me says I must stand up for my principles. Part of me kicks in to say I am not in the right state of health, or mentally strong enough to take it on with the stress that seems to be involved.

I think my wife is letting me go through the process, almost like a stage I need to go through, and I think she feels I will come to the right decision, in her mind, which is to forget it.

I also spoke to one of my best friends this afternoon who can understand why but who is advising me to drop it, let go, and move on. But what about the next poor person to be in the same position unless these matters are brought into the open. But I am too old and poorly to take the system on.

So I will leave it for a few weeks and see how I feel then and see if the matters stops entering my thought process and goes away.

Again thank you all - you're stars - and no trolls joining in in:T

Parva

I have to be honest and and say it as I read it in your first post but it looks highly unlikely that you would get anywhere with this. You don't go into great detail about exactly what happened but I would imagine you will have a pretty tough job convincing a judge that they decided to finish their Rich Tea biscuits before tending to your needs. Sorry, my terrible jokes. In all seriousness though to prove medical negligence you would have to have some tangible evidence that this was indeed the case and not just your word versus theirs. As I said, I'm only going off what you initially wrote so I'm likely missing a lot of facts so apologies for that.

I almost didn't bother to persue my case, frankly after 2 months in hospitals both here and abroad I just wanted an end to the matter and wanted to get back to normality as soon as I could. It was only my mums insistence that I persue this and the realisation that I will never again have 'normality' in the way that I knew it that has made me decide to take this further. In my case I have evidence of clinical negligence but even though I'm 7 months into this claim it has yet to pass the acid test which entails all of my medical records being scrutinised by an independent doctor. It is only once this is approved that we get into top gear and even then, it may well take years.

If you think that you have documented proof of negligence then it might be worth exploring this further but if this is based purely on your own observations and experience then I suspect it may be better for your long term health to forget it and move on.

Anubis_2

Lum wrote: »

Our solicitor has been on the case for nearly a year now, and is getting nowhere. They just completely ignore his requests.

Then you need a new solicitor.

luminated

Parva wrote: »

If you think that you have documented proof of negligence then it might be worth exploring this further but if this is based purely on your own observations and experience then I suspect it may be better for your long term health to forget it and move on.

No I never gave the detail in my OP and don't really want to other than to say if I get my hands on the records (GP & Hospital) they will confirm the inefficiency but not sure when that turns to negligence. I also take comfort from the senior cardiologist visiting me, in intensive care, after the resuscitation and subsequent procedures, where he apologised profusely saying he and the hospital got it wrong with me.