Too many people who complain to the NHS are not getting the answers they deserve when things go wrong, a Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report has shown.
The report outlines 133 cases, investigated between July and September 2015, and includes 93 complaints about the NHS.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman makes final decisions on unresolved complaints, approximately 4000 a year, about the NHS in England and UK government departments and other UK public organisations.
In today’s report incidents of avoidable death, delayed cancer diagnosis, mistreatment of patients with mental health problems and poor end of life care are among the upheld NHS complaints in the report.
The Obudsman have said the cases in the report provide public services with valuable lessons by showing what needs to change to help avoid the same mistake happening again.
Julie Mellor from Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said: ‘The NHS provides excellent care for patients every day, which is why it is so important that when mistakes are made they are dealt with well.
'These cases bring home all the suffering patients and their families experience when things go wrong, particularly when complaints are not handled effectively at a local level. Families have been left without an explanation as to why their loved ones died, mistakes have not been admitted, which means that much needed service improvements are being delayed.
‘We are sharing these cases to help the NHS and other public sector organisations recognise and value the importance of complaints in helping to improve services.’
In one case, the organisation found that an NHS trust had missed opportunities to prevent a woman committing suicide after she was discharged from hospital despite a history of depression and previous attempts to take her own life.
The trust also failed to apologise properly or learn from its mistakes when the woman’s family complained.
Another investigation found that a woman had died an avoidable death after two GPs failed to diagnose and treat her correctly after she had developed deep vein thrombosis. She was admitted to hospital nine days later then died. The trust delayed in responding to her husband's complaint. Following the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman investigation the GP practice apologised and paid her husband.
The report also detailed a cancer patient that died after being mis-prescribed laxative for 38 days.
The report includes 40 complaints about other public bodies such as the Home Office's border law enforcement, Border Force; the organisation that represents children in court cases, Cafcass; the Job Centre and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS). Delays, poor decisions and complaint handling were common findings in all the cases in the report.
