General Hospital compensation claims (FOI)

Request 

A

How many claims for compensation has Jersey General Hospital received in the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 so far?

B

How much money was paid out in compensation in the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 so far?

I would like the information to be broken down by year. E.g., 2018: 40 claims, £10,000 paid out in compensation

Response 

A

i) 

A claim for compensation is classified as being a written approach to the Minister for Health and Social Services, either by a legal representative acting for a patient and/or patient's family or a litigant in person seeking to claim compensation in relation to any alleged negligent act, error or omission by any employee or in relation to an incident which resulted in a personal injury.

ii) Settlements may be made out of court, whether the claims are 'taken to court' or 'may not have reached court', or claims may be determined by the Royal Court at trial. 

iii)        

Individual compensation awards for damages may have a confidentiality agreement included in the terms of settlement and the details of the claim. Compensation awards may be global settlements which include damages, costs and disbursements. 

iv)        

For the purposes of this response, the number of claims received is confirmed. Not all claims for compensation will progress or succeed, nor will all allegations be accepted or admitted.

B

The total amount paid in compensation between 2018 and 2022 is £2,979,127.00. Some compensation awards may be global settlements which include damages, costs and disbursements and these cannot be broken down into just the compensation figure. Global settlements are included in this figure.  

As noted above, individual compensation awards for damages may have a confidentiality agreement included in the terms of settlement and the details of the claim. To break down the figure by year could prejudice the commercial interests of Health and Community Services (HCS) and impact on the privacy of individuals and therefore, Article 33 and Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 have been applied.

Article Applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b)  its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.

Article 33 - Commercial interests

Information is qualified exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).

Prejudice test

Article 33 is a qualified exemption and, as such, we have conducted a prejudice test as required by law. HCS has assessed whether, in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in supplying the information is outweighed by the prejudice that would likely result by doing so. It is recognised that there is a public interest in transparency about compensation claims made against Government Departments and the settlements reached. However, having considered the public interest, HCS has concluded that the public interest in disclosing this information is outweighed by the potential prejudice that would likely result for any future proceedings.