NHS to get pay outs from work injury insurers

The NHS will be able to recover costs from insurance companies for treating patients where personal injury compensation is paid, under a new scheme launched today.

Hospitals are already able to recover the costs of treating people injured in road traffic accidents (RTA) where they have successfully claimed compensation for their injuries.

NHS costs are payable by the insurer that pays the compensation. Five years after the RTA scheme came into operation it is recovering around £105 million per year for the NHS.

It is expected that the expanded ICR scheme will recover an additional £150 million per year once fully bedded in.

Publishing a consultation on the draft Regulations for the new, expanded NHS Injury Costs Recovery (ICR) scheme, Health Minister Rosie Winterton said: "This policy will encourage employers to take steps to prevent employees being injured and when implemented should increase the total recouped each year to around £250 million for the NHS - equivalent to 53,000 hip operations and 11,000 newly qualified nurses.

"It is unnacceptable that taxpayers have to pay for the medical treatment of someone injured at work simply because employers fail to take adequate steps to protect their workforce. Individual hospitals will now be able to recover the costs and decide where they want to reinvest that money to improve services they want."

TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, said: "We welcome this consultation. It is important that negligent employers pay the full cost of their actions rather than expecting the taxpayers to subsidise their failures to protect workers.

"However it important that this is not just seen as another cost to be added to insurance premiums and instead is used by the insurance industry as an incentive to improve the measures that employers take to prevent injuries at work."

(gmcg/mb)