The Dulwich Hill Lewisham branch of the ALP has passed a motion supporting better compensation arrangements for injured patients. Sarah was invited to give a talk at the May meeting of the branch.

She contrasted the compensation arrangements for people suffering head injuries on the roads or in the workplace with those for people suffering head injuries in hospitals. Please support our petition for no-fault compensation for Australian injured patients.

She explained the particular difficulties facing injured patients in suing doctors or hospitals: the fact that the defendants control the key evidence, the medical records; and that defendants have little difficulty finding expert witnesses to support them, whereas that is a major problem for injured patients.

She said, “The injured patient has usually lost their livelihood and is up against health professionals, hospitals, government authorities or private companies and the insurers who defend them. The imbalance in resources of time, money and expertise is probably more marked than in any other area of litigation.”

Sarah talked about the advantages of no-fault compensation schemes for healthcare injuries and said that the policy architecture for establishing such a scheme already exists: the proposed National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIIS), a federation of state-based schemes covering road accidents, workplace accidents, medical treatment injuries and other injuries.

In its motion, the Dulwich Hill Lewisham branch called upon the NSW Minister for Health to include patient harm and appropriate compensation in the Terms of Reference for the forthcoming royal commission into New South Wales health services.
It also called on the Federal Government to:

� Encourage implementation of the National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIIS), the proposed federation of state-based injury schemes which was first recommended by the Productivity Commission in 2011.

� Restore funding for the Medical Indemnity National Collection (MINC), which was cut by the Coalition government in 2015, and thus enable national data on compensation claims and their outcomes to be collected once again;

� Establish a review of the statute law on medical negligence to examine whether it provides equality before the law between injured patients and the health professionals, hospitals, government authorities and insurers which defend medical negligence claims.”

Please continue to encourage everyone you know to sign and share our petition.

We are very grateful for your continuing support.

Sarah and Vickie