We explore how medical negligence disproportionately affects women’s healthcare in England and Wales, why the inequality persists, and how those who have suffered avoidable harm can seek legal redress.
In 1948, the NHS was founded on the promise of universal, equal care. Yet behind that principle lies a deeply troubling pattern: women are routinely misdiagnosed, dismissed, and failed in healthcare. From being more at risk of a heart attack misdiagnosis in a middle aged-woman, to the near-decade long wait for an endometriosis diagnosis, to the preventable deaths of babies and mothers in underfunded maternity units, the evidence is abundant and damning.
We explore how medical negligence disproportionately affects women in England and Wales, why the inequality persists, and how those who have suffered avoidable harm can seek legal redress.
The financial scale of NHS medical negligence is staggering. According to NHS Resolution’s 2025 Annual Report, the number of settled claims rose by 9.5% to more than £3 billion – and women’s health sits at the centre of this crisis. Maternity-related claims accounted for 42% of all medical negligence payments by value in 2024/2025, and when measured by value, claims related to obstetrics carries a 53% share of all medical negligence expenditure. Since 2019, the NHS has paid out an estimated £27.4bn bill for maternity-related claims alone – this exceeds the estimated £18bn budget allocated to maternity care over the same period.
In fact, in June 2026, the family of a girl who suffered brain damage at birth have been awarded £28m alone, after an NHS trust admitted negligence, highlighting the severity of the
These figures represent a human cost of enormous proportions. The Ockenden Report (March 2022), compiled following a five-year independent inquiry into Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, found that 201 babies and nine mothers could have survived with better care. Of the 12 maternal deaths reviewed, none of the mothers received care in line with best practice and in three-quarters of cases, the care could have been significantly improved. Between 2011 and 2019, 40% of stillbirths and 43% of neonatal deaths were never investigated at all. The inquiry’s lead chairwoman, Donna Ockenden, concluded that hospital management “failed to investigate, failed to learn and failed to improve and therefore often failed to safeguard mothers and their babies at one of the most important times in their lives”.
Ockenden’s work is far from finished. She has recently been appointed to lead further independent reviews into maternity services at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, and University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust. A further 12 trusts have recently been subject to a parallel investigation chaired by Baroness Amos.
The failures extend well beyond maternity care. Research by the University of Leeds, using the national heart attack register (MINAP), found that women with a confirmed STEMI (complete artery blockage) diagnosis had a 59% greater chance of initial misdiagnosis compared with men, and those with NSTEMI (partial artery blockage) faced a 41% greater risk. Combined, women face approximately a 50% higher likelihood of being initially misdiagnosed following a heart attack. Women who were misdiagnosed carried a 70% increased risk of death within 30 days. The British Heart Foundation estimates that differences in cardiac care have contributed to more than 8,000 avoidable deaths of women in England over the course of a decade.
Part of the explanation lies in chronic underfunding of women’s health research. According to Imperial College London and the NHS Confederation, only 2% of publicly funded UK medical research is dedicated to pregnancy, childbirth, and female reproductive health – despite one in three women experiencing a reproductive or gynaecological condition in their lifetime. The NHS Confederation estimates that, for every additional £1 invested in women’s health services, the NHS could save £11 in avoided negligence costs.
Gynaecological Conditions: Diagnostic Failures
Endometriosis affects one in 10 women in the UK, yet the most recent survey by Endometriosis UK found the average time to diagnosis has risen to nine years and four months – up from eight years in 2020. Around one in four women visited their GP 10 times or more before the condition was even suspected. Of the 55% who attended A&E with symptoms, 46% were sent home without treatment. Strikingly, 83% of respondents reported being told by a healthcare professional that they were “making a fuss about nothing”, that their symptoms were normal, or experiencing similar dismissal.
For ethnically diverse communities, diagnosis takes even longer, with an average wait of 11 years, despite frequently seeking medical help sooner. After seeing a specialist, those women wait a further four years before receiving a diagnosis, compared to less than two years for non-ethnically diverse women. Neelam Heera Shergill, CEO of Cysters, said: “These are not marginal differences. These are systemic failings.”
The Government’s own ‘Women’s Health – Let’s Talk About It’ survey, which informed the Women’s Health Strategy for England (2022), found that 84% of respondents had at some point felt like a healthcare professional was not listening to them. Of those, 72% said it occurred when discussing symptoms, 56% when seeking specialist referral, and 54% when discussing treatment options.
A survey of 5,100 UK adults found that more than half of women (56%) feel their pain is ignored or dismissed by healthcare professionals. The Gender Pain Gap Index Report also found that, in 2025, 5% more women than men felt their pain had been dismissed (compared to 2% in 2022), and that fewer than half of women (47%) received a diagnosis within 11 months, against two-thirds of men (66%). A third of women felt the delay in diagnosis was because they were not listened to or taken seriously by their healthcare professional. The NIHR’s (National Institute for Health and Care Research) evidence review identifies a lack of staff time, lack of knowledge about a condition and implicit bias as key drivers, and notes that women’s pain has historically been framed as psychological or exaggerated – a pattern that continues to generate harm.
The Legal Position: Medical Negligence and Women’s Healthcare
Medical negligence is defined as a failure by a healthcare professional to provide the standard of care that a reasonable body of professionals in the same field would have provided, which directly causes harm to the patient. In England and Wales, the governing legal test derives from Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582, as refined by the House of Lords in Bolitho v City and Hackney HA [1997] UKHL, 46. Under Bolitho, anybody of professional opinion relied upon by a defendant must not merely exist but must be capable of withstanding logical analysis. In Scotland, the equivalent standard is set by Hunter v Hanley [1955] SC 200.
To succeed in a claim, a claimant must establish that:
In cases of delayed or missed diagnosis – where symptoms were reported and documented but not properly investigated – establishing breach may be assisted by clinical protocols that were not followed.
There is no standalone medical negligence claim for gender discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. Although the Act may apply in circumstances where unlawful sex discrimination can be established, most cases involving delayed diagnosis or inadequate treatment are pursued as medical negligence claims. What the growing body of statistical evidence does show, however, is that certain diagnostic failures affecting women are now recognised and well-documented risks. While this evidence alone does not establish negligence, it may help demonstrate that those risks were foreseeable, potentially making it more difficult for a defendant to argue that a failure to investigate or diagnose met the required standard of care.
In 2022, the government published the first Women’s Health Strategy, setting out a 10-year plan to address disparities in women’s healthcare, with priority areas including menstrual health, gynaecological conditions and the underrepresentation of women in medical research. In 2026, the government released its Renewed Women’s Health Strategy after believing its predecessor was ‘operated within and accepted an outmoded care model’.
The overall purpose of its strategy is to ‘give women and girls real voice, choice and power.’ The expectations over the next decade under this plan will see:
The Women and Equalities Committee’s 2024 report on Women’s Reproductive Health Conditions called for better clinical training in recognising gynaecological conditions, improved NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines on PMOS (formerly PCOS) and earlier education in schools. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says that more action is desperately needed on endometriosis diagnosis delays. Donna Ockenden, speaking in 2025, was characteristically direct, saying: “we cannot keep having report after report with warm words, we have to do better”.
At a structural level, the persistent exclusion of women from clinical trials has meant that diagnostic tools, drug dosages and treatment protocols were developed primarily from male data. This is a documented and correctable problem. Healthwatch’s March 2026 findings on women’s healthcare confirm that what women want above all is to be taken seriously the first time. They do not want to navigate multiple appointments before being taken seriously or referred for tests or specialist support.
The evidence set out leads to a single uncomfortable conclusion: women in the UK are being failed by the healthcare system in a manner that is consistent, documented and, in many cases, legally actionable. From the 201 avoidable deaths exposed by the Ockenden report to the nine-year endometriosis diagnosis wait, to the 50% greater likelihood of heart attack misdiagnosis, the data does not support the view that these are isolated individual failings.
They are systemic – products of a research and clinical culture that has historically dismissed women’s pain. Reform is essential and overdue: in training, research funding, clinical guidelines and culture. The Women’s Health Strategy for England represents a positive step, but strategy must translate into practice. In the meantime, the law offers a means of redress for those who have suffered avoidable harm. The Ockenden inquiry, the gender pain gap data and the parliamentary evidence all point in the same direction – the time for warm words has passed.
If you believe you, or someone you care for, has been a victim of medical negligence in these circumstances our legal experts are here to help.
We can guide you through making a claim for compensation to help you secure a better and brighter future. You should not have to fight to be believed – but until the system changes, the law remains a powerful tool.
