3. Mrs O complains that while an inpatient at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust she fell, on 12 November, which caused a fractured spine.
4. As a result Mrs O says she is now unable to walk, and on discharge from the Trust had to go to a care home. Mr O now lives alone which has made his life hard.
5. Mrs O would like the Trust to apologise and accept responsibility for her being unable to walk.
7. The law says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless we consider there is a good reason to do so. We have discussed this with Mr O and his advocate to understand the reasons why he could not bring his complaint to us sooner. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to Mr O.
8. Mrs O fell on 12 November 2019, while being assisted back to her bed, at the Trust. Mr O says Mrs O fractured her spine during the incident and can no longer walk.
9. On 23 December 2019, Mrs O was discharged from the Trust into a care home. On 1 January 2020, Mr O instructed an advocate. On 23 January 2020, Mr O wrote a complaint letter to the Trust.
10. The Trust took over six months to respond to the complaint (dated 5 August 2020). The complaint was made in January 2020, there was a national lockdown in March and the response was provided at the start of August. The response signposted Mr O to us. Mr O had three months before the time limit to submit his complaint to us.
11. We contacted Mr O on 8 December 2021. Mr O was not able to advise me of any reason he could not have submitted his complaint earlier. We then contacted his advocate on the same day. The advocate has confirmed that no action was taken until 3 September 2020. At this point, it was decided Mr O’s daughter would be handling the complaint. Following this, no further action was taken by Mr O or his daughter. The advocate has confirmed Mr O took back the complaint on 19 November 2020.
12. No action was taken by Mr O until 1 February 2021, when we received the complaint form. We have been advised there was a physical barrier preventing Mr O submitting his complaint because he was in hospital in December 2020.
13. Mr O was able to act promptly by instructing an advocate within two months, and then submitting his complaint to the Trust in two months and two weeks. On receipt of the final response letter, Mr O had three months to submit his complaint to us. No action was taken for six months when the complaint form was submitted to us in February 2021. We have taken into consideration that Mr O was admitted into hospital in December 2020. This occurred after the time limit for the complaint. We have not been provided with any evidence that Mr O or his family were not able to submit their complaint, following the Trust’s final response, and before the one-year time limit.
14. We have taken into account the full timeline of the case, all of the explanations Mr O and the advocate provided, and the time taken with local resolution. Having thought about this carefully, we have not seen justification to put the time limit to one side, as set out in our service model. There appears to have been opportunities for Mr O to move his complaint forward more quickly after the Trust’s final response letter. His explanations for the reasons for the delays are not strong enough to justify putting the time limit to one side. The complaint is over two months out of time, and we have decided to take no further action on this case because of this.
1. We have carefully considered Mrs O’s complaint about Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust). We have decided the complaint falls outside of our time limit.
2. We consider that Mrs O and Mr O could have complained to us much sooner than they did. We are sorry to hear of the events surrounding the complaint. We understand how upsetting it has been for Mr O with his wife, Mrs O, going into a care home.