It's been revealed health boards in Scotland have paid out more than £60 million in legal claims since 2018.
Statistics released to the Scottish Conservatives under freedom of information legislation from 13 of the country’s 14 health authorities show £60,372,215.76 had been spent on 2,466 claims, as of June last year.
142 of those claims were in Fife, with the largest cost for a single claim coming in at £183,145, in 2018.
Scottish Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said the figures are a result of under-staffing in the health service, calling on the Scottish Government to work towards a “modern, efficient and local health service”.
He added: “My heart goes out to the patients and families who have suffered as a result of failings in Scotland’s NHS.
“But the buck for this stops with a succession of SNP health secretaries – including Humza Yousaf and discredited Michael Matheson.
“These figures are a damning indictment of their dire workforce planning, which has left our health service woefully under-resourced.
“Dedicated staff are dangerously overstretched and, tragically but inevitably, this is leading to more mistakes, a growing number of compensation claims and resulting legal costs."
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “We sympathise with any patient whose treatment has failed to reach the standards we all expect from our health system.
“Scotland has one of the most transparent healthcare systems in the world, and is also a leader in patient safety.
“As with all health systems, where legal cases arise, there will be a necessary level of costs – but we seek to limit that as far as possible and our NHS learns constantly from care experiences that go well and those where standards falls short.
“NHS Scotland staffing is at record levels and is being further bolstered by our investment, since autumn 2021, of some £18 million to recruit 1,250 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals from overseas by the end of this financial year.”
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