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Selected Investigations Completed December 2000March 2001 > Part I, Case no. E.1591/98-99
Complaint against: Barts and The London NHS Trust
Summary of case
The Ombudsman upheld a complaint by Mrs Y that the Trust failed to provide adequate answers to concerns about her late husband’s care and treatment. Mr Y had died following heart surgery in 1996. Following efforts at local resolution, Mrs Y remained dissatisfied and wrote in June 1998 listing several questions to which she still sought answers. An administrator who contacted Mrs Y left her with the impression that an independent review would be arranged. However, instead the Trust’s convener arranged for Mrs Y to meet the consultant providing him with clinical advice. Mrs Y’s expectation was that the meeting might provide the answers she was seeking to her questions about her husband’s treatment. But the clinical adviser was not in a position to meet her expectations and Mrs Y’s disappointment was not alleviated by receipt of his written account of the meeting. The Ombudsman concluded that the process by which the Trust provided answers to the issues raised in Mrs Y’s letter of June 1998 was inadequate and that they did not provide the full explanationsin terms which a lay person could understandwhich Mrs Y needed. To that extent, the Ombudsman upheld the complaint. However having taken clinical advice, he found no evidence that the Trust misled Mrs Y in the answers they did give. The Trust were aware that their handling of complaints needed improvement and were taking action about that. They apologised. They agreed to further audit the complaints process, to develop a policy for the independent review process, to monitor the management of requests for independent reviews, and to consider measures to improve communications with patients’ families.
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