'No-Blame' Redress scheme

1. Introduction

1.1 The existing approach is that "the NHS does not pay compensation when it has no legal liability for the harm suffered by the patient".

1.2 Research suggests that between 10-25% of episodes of healthcare (in general hospital, community hospital and general practice) are associated with an adverse event. One third to a half of these events are thought to be avoidable^[8].

1.3 The definition of an adverse event taken from the National Framework^[9] issued by NHS Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS), originally in September 2013, with a second edition in April 2015 is:

'An adverse event is defined as an event that could have caused (a near miss), or did result in, harm to people or groups of people.'