Poor patient care arising from Kent’s under-pressure A&E departments cost the NHS and taxpayers more than £10 million last year.

Treatment delays, inadequate nursing, and waits or failures in getting tests or a diagnosis are among the reasons why patients pursued negligence claims after seeking emergency treatment.

As MPs demand the government does more to ‘reduce tragic incidences of patient harm’, it has emerged that East Kent Hospitals handed over more than £6 million to people in compensation last year.

The trust, which runs the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, QEQM in Margate, and William Harvey in Ashford, and is one of the largest in the UK, settled or closed 16 medical negligence cases for faults in care that originated in A&E.

That figure leaps to more than £8 million when legal costs are taken into account - one of the largest bills among England’s hospital trusts in the last financial year, and contributing heavily to the county’s £10 million total.

According to figures from NHS Resolution - the health service’s legal arm, which administers claims of clinical negligence - 40 cases brought against A&E departments were settled by Kent’s hospital trusts in the 2023/24 financial year.

The year before the total was 31 - costing a little over £4 million in costs and damages.

That year, hospitals in east Kent were responsible for 18 of those - amounting to £2,731,054 in legal fees and compensation.

Medical negligence data covering the past five financial years has been published against the backdrop of another bleak and difficult winter for many of Kent’s A&E departments.

In January, three out of four hospital trusts in the county recorded their worst-ever emergency figures amid persistent pressure on services.

That month, 2,839 patients were left waiting at least 12 hours for a bed on a ward. Five years ago, that figure was just five.

Patients in recent months have also reported problems with overcrowding in waiting rooms, beds lined up in corridors and long waits for both treatment or a subsequent space on a ward - often as a result of ‘bed blocking’, where patients are awaiting discharge but lack a suitable placement to move on to.

The strain on staff and services has also seen East Kent Hospitals Trust repeatedly record some of the worst A&E waits in England during the last two years - with visitors to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford last December describing the emergency department as as ‘warzone’.

Due to the level of investigation required in clinical negligence claims, most cases are not settled within the same financial year as the incident took place, says the health service.

Instead, there can often be a gap between a patient’s treatment and a claim’s closure, with the decision to settle made by NHS Resolution and covered by the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts that sees bodies contribute to a central financial fund.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has settled 19 cases in the course of the last three years - costing taxpayers close to £4 million.

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, which runs Darent Valley Hospital in Greenhithe has settled at least 14 - with damages and costs amounting to more than £2.9 million.

Medway Maritime Hospital, which settled 10 negligence claims last year for care that originated or was connected to A&E, has had its accident and emergency department rating downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement” after an inspection in February.

Problems with overcrowding and treating patients in undesignated areas of the department were among issues highlighted in the report, which took a year to publish because of an IT glitch.

Staff shortages causing patients to go up to seven hours without pain relief, a lack of bedding, washing facilities and complaints from housekeepers that cramped conditions impacted on cleaning were also listed in the 31-page damning assessment.

An employee also told the Care Quality Commission, which carried out the inspection, that they were “overwhelmed by overcrowding and, as a result, patient safety was compromised”.

Inspectors last year also found frail patients were told to soil themselves as there was nobody to take them to the toilet, and one complained of “sitting in faeces all day”.

Medway NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, has settled a total of 25 medical negligence claims in the last three years that were brought against its A&E department, costing more than £2.6 million in damages and legal costs.

In a joint statement, Kent’s hospital trusts said: “We are very sorry to any patients and their families who did not receive the high-quality care we aim to provide.

“In the very rare cases where things go wrong, we thoroughly investigate, using a national framework, and take action to learn from what has gone wrong, to prevent it from happening again.”

However, the amount being set aside to cover negligence claims has prompted calls from ministers for health officials to do more to reduce patient harm and drive down “jaw-dropping” payouts for poor care.

The Public Accounts Committee, which has scrutinised Department of Health and Social Care accounts, points out that NHS Resolution paid a total of £2.8 billion to people wronged by clinical negligence in 2023/24.

An “astronomical” 19% – or £536 million – of this went to lawyers representing patients, according to the report.

In its accounts, DHSC had set aside an “astounding” £58.2 billion to cover the potential costs of clinical negligence events occurring prior to April 1 2024, the PAC adds.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the committee, said: “The fact that government has set aside tens of billions of pounds for clinical negligence payments, its second most costly liability after some of the world’s most complex nuclear decommissioning projects, should give our entire society pause.

“This is a sign of a system struggling to do right by the people it is designed to help.

“It must be a priority of the highest order for government to reduce tragic incidences of patient harm, and lay out a mechanism to reduce legal fees to manage the jaw-dropping costs involved more effectively.”