Jackson Report Special
Jackson Report Special, Feb 2010, Legal & Medical Magazine. Click to open
From the Woolf at the Door to Jackson at the Gate
Dr. Brunjes assess the possible impact of the Jackson Review on Medical Experts
February 2010, Legal & Medical Magazine
History has a habit of repeating itself. In the world of personal injury it appears approximately every decade there is a landmark judicial review which accelerates the sector into its next chapter. In 1999 the conversation from the chattering classes centred around platitudes such as ‘Crying Woolf’ and ‘Beware of the Were-Woolf’. Unfortunately the name Jackson does not have the same poetic licence. The best I can come up with is ‘From the Woolf at the Door to Jackson at the Gate’. Both Lord Justice Jackson and the MoJ review have a greater impact on solicitors but the medical profession would ignore both these events at their peril.
Medical intermediaries have become established in the sector over the last twenty years. This is a consequence of the marketplace, legal expense insurers, claims management companies and personal injury work (particularly low-value road traffic accidents) being focussed on large national firms. Running parallel has been selecting the level of opinion which is both proportionate in terms of expertise and cost for the individual case. General practitioner reports have become more prevalent in fast-track/low-value cases in road traffic, employment liability and public liability. Twenty years ago eighty per cent of opinion was provided by orthopaedic surgeons; eighty per cent of opinion is now provided by general practitioners. Following Woolf, the requirement for an expert to appear in Court reduced significantly.
Medical experts and medical intermediaries would be advised to understand and adapt to the reforms suggested by Lord Justice Jackson. There would be fixed fees for all fast track cases (up to £25,000) which, in effect, would require a ‘perfect’ medical report first time round, preferably with no addendum. As stated above, there would be a greater necessity for compliance with an electronic process such as WARP or GRIP. The larger medical intermediaries are geared up for this but many medical experts are not. Lord Justice Jackson states, ‘In my view the sums recoverable for obtaining medical reports and medical records should be capped at the levels currently specified in the MRO Agreement. The claimants should be entitled to recover those sums for procuring medical reports and medical records, irrespective of whether they do so directly or through the agency of an MRO. The fixed maximum costs for obtaining medical reports and medical records should be regularly reviewed by the Costs Council.’ It is important for all medical opinion to understand that solicitors will have to comply with certain timelines. There will be a need to keep up with timelines (all tracks) as strengthening of Court case management powers and more use of sanctions for default will mean tardy performers will cause more trouble for those instructing them.
Lord Justice Jackson affects multi-track cases less from the legal and medical point of view. There are no fixed fees but this will remain on and move up the agenda going forward. There will be an impact on clinical negligence. There are to be much tighter timelines around the release of medical records with financial penalties.
Going forward there will be greater reliance on IT, electronic process and timescales. Medical experts and medical companies will have to comply with service level agreements and understand key performance indicators. It is important that all medical intervention (doctors and agencies) understand that they are part of and not the centre of the process.
Dr Harry Brünjes
Chairman, Premier Medical Group