To make a claim against hospital

[PistachioFrapp]

Not sure if I'm reasonable to do this or if I just need to suck it up?

I had 3 suspicious moles removed before Christmas, 2 biopsies came back clear but the 3rd sample went missing.

Hospital debated for a few weeks and then said it was up to me, probably all ok, but if I wanted to be sure they could do a wider excision on the third one to do another biopsy.

Obviously I went ahead and thankfully it was clear. So, in the end, no harm was done.

BUT

The truth is, the procedure is not very pleasant, and it was worse second time around as they had to cut wider and deeper. I had to go into London for the procedure and a follow up which cost money and took up my time. The healing process was inevitably longer and more painful and the scar is twice as big as it should have been.

I'm really annoyed, I have a horrible scar that still hasn't fully healed (the other original two have healed and faded and don't bother me at all).

It's a private hospital btw if that makes a difference so I don't have any guilt about attacking the NHS.

Should I pursue for compensation or just get over it?

This is also not true. A hospital can have you sign any discharge of liability they like but it won’t protect them if an employee acted negligently. And if a contact term is held to be unfair it won’t be enforceable, even if a person agreed to it.

This thread is full of people who are either very bad lawyers or not lawyers at all, happily dispensing completely incorrect advice.

but they asked if you wanted a Wider excision

you could have just said… same size as the missing sample

Yeah this ☝️

FFS 🙄

Wider excision is the only option, they have to cut out the original scar and go around the first wound. Wider and deeper to get through the scar tissue.

I didn't randomly choose for them to cut out a wider bit.

it’s an important point because the OP made the decision to go for a wider incision

the fact you don’t like that point means nothing (aside from making me chuckle)

Presumably they couldn’t make the new incision the same size as the original sample, or the hospital would have recommended this.

My mother had a sample taken of a mole for a biopsy. The biopsy was inconclusive and they recommended a further sample be obtained. A much wider incision was required because with the first sample having been removed, they had to dig deeper and more widely to obtain sufficient tissue for the second biopsy to be done.

You spectacularly missed the point.

you’re awesome

anyone encouraging the op
is just wasting her time

Why?

What is there about having a second operation needing a wider and deeper incision and leaving a large scar that constitutes "no harm" in your book? To say nothing of the wasted costs of the first operation, and the costs involved in the second admission?

I don't know if you could class it as medical negligence. The lost sample was obviously a mistake, but these do happen. I think if they had failed to then follow up, and do the other procedure, then it could have been negligent?
Though obviously it was unpleasant and it incurred cost, wasted time etc. I'm not sure if that's a high enough threshold for compensation? Could you speak to their equivalent of PALS?
I'm glad you're alright and it wasn't anything horrible.

@stillisHQ do you know much about biopsies?

I think the amount of compensation you could potentially recover would be tiny in relation to stress of pursuing a claim. I'd put this one down to bad experience & move on personally x

You don't know what the result of the first biopsy was- because they lost the sample. So, that sample may have shown that cancer cells were there- or not- and if they were there, they could have indicated what stage it was. The stage of the cancer determines how large the second cut would need to be.

So, now the OP is in the situation where she doesn't really know what the results of the wide area excision actually mean- it could be she had cancerous cells and they were all removed during the original excision, or it could mean that there was no cancer there in the first place. I don't think it's possible for the Dr to rule on either scenario as they lost the sample.

What I would want to check, is the likelihood of it was cancerous, whether the wide area excision is likely to show additional cancer cells or not. I think it's also important for future treatment to know what margins they cut so you can tell your new team.

It's the uncertainty that she can likely claim against?

How on earth would claiming compensation involve any moral code? This is a commercial organisation insured by another commercial organisation, charging for work which it has failed to carry out properly and caused damage as a result. What is immoral about asking them to compensate for their failure?

If you bought, say, a microwave that was wired wrong and caused someone in the family to suffer burns, would asking for your money back and compensation for injury and the costs of having the injury dealt with be "looking for easy money" and breaking some moral code?

Stop whinging. You don’t have cancer, they didn’t charge you for the second excision.

What are you trying to achieve???

You clearly don't know how they test for skin cancer

Only because they hadn't done their job properly in the first place. If OP hadn't had the operation there would always have been a concern that actually there was a malignancy which was not being treated. It's a choice that was forced on her, and it shouldn't have been.

Try to get past what happened to you. You've got very little chance of claiming against the NHS. One individual against an enormous national organisation has no chance.

I was given the wrong drug (A Consultant himself later rang me and told me) which caused HUGE changes. There was a big investigation (The hospital itself ordered it, not me). They admitted their errors, apologised, that was it. Nothing else, no point.

What choice did she have given that they'd taken the original mole out? They could hardly do the same incision. It was the only way she could rule out cancer.

Op have the hospital taken responsibility for losing the sample? I was just thinking that where I am the sample would be sent away so you would need to work out where it got lost before being able to make a claim.

Absolutely this.

OP, you are better off posting on the Legal board with this sort of query. For some reason people on MN think it's immoral to claim damages for injury, and have no understanding of the fact that it is entirely normal to claim damages for pain, suffering, inconvenience and loss of time, and it's why people have insurance.

What always intrigues me is that they go quiet when you ask whether they seriously wouldn't contemplate claiming if they were in, say, a crash caused by someone else's negligence and suffered badly broken legs; and, if they would, why is that different from claiming for any lesser injury.

How? Are you really suggesting they could have taken a random sample somewhere else? This was a potentially cancerous mole, it's only the site of the mole that they can check because that is where they may find cancerous cells. They can't make the same incision there because, um, it's already been incised. They can only check that area by making a wider incision. Look at the original post, it was the hospital who said this would be necessary, not OP.