The government is opening a consultation on fixed recoverable costs in low value clinical negligence claims. The proposed scheme aims to avoid litigation and speed up the exchange of evidence for faster agreement on liability, causation and quantum.

Read the latest developments regarding the impending Public Inquiry, including what this means for you.

We have summarised the key temporary variations to primary care contracts as well as the changes to the 2021/22 Network Contract Directed Enhanced Services (DES).

Two cases awaiting decisions from the Court of Appeal could have a significant impact for healthcare organisations.

The vast majority of the inquest cases relate to acquisition of Covid-19 during hospital admission and staffing/resource issues. In a recent case a Coroner was critical of a decision not to escalate a patient’s care to ICU.

Delays to non-Covid treatment is the leading type of claim against NHS Trusts to date, followed by Hospital-Acquired Covid (HAC) and failure to treat Covid appropriately.

Concussion injury and its consequences continue to be in the news, with group litigation planned by both rugby and football players. We could see more claims of this nature, including from other sports where head injury is a risk.

In this year’s forward view, we consider issues ranging from fixed recoverable costs in clinical negligence claims, claims resulting from COVID-19 treatment, major inquiries, clinical trials and healthcare technology.

This year is likely to see a resurgence of non-Covid trials which have been postponed or paused in the last two years, and new trials for Covid treatments and vaccines (e.g. those based on conventional vaccine technology).

The Court of Appeal held that the Chief Constable was liable for any disability discrimination by the statutory police misconduct panel that had determined disciplinary allegations against the claimant police officer.

The pandemic has seen an acceleration in the use of technology: remote GP consultations, the use of apps for ‘track and trace’ and AI as a diagnostic reporting tool (e.g. in radiology), with legal issues likely to centre on information governance.

Safety of two medicines (Primodos and Sodium Valproate) and one device (pelvic mesh) was at the heart of the report of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review. Read the latest update on this topic.