University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

3. Mr A complains about the care and treatment he received from the Trust. He specifically complains:

• the Trust’s dermatologist refused to rewrite a letter to his GP specifying quantities of viscopaste (medicated) bandages and giving details of other topical agents (medication applied directly to the area being treated) that could be prescribed • the dermatologist did not offer or advise on topical agents the Trust or his GP could prescribe but, instead, from July 2019, wrote misleading and inaccurate letters to his GP saying they did not give advice because he never asked for it • the Trust failed to correct the medical records to show he has exceeded the lifetime amount of phototherapy/PUVA (a type of ultraviolet radiation treatment) • the Trust failed to recognise it was not appropriate to prescribe him methotrexate/ciclosporin medication (immunosuppressants), in line with British Association of Dermatologists guidelines.

4. As a result of the issues Mr A complains about, he tells us he has been unable to receive appropriate treatment from the Trust and his GP. He says this has made his eczema worse to such an extent he does not want to go out and finds day-to-day jobs around the house difficult.

5. Mr A wants us to achieve an acceptance of failings from the Trust.

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 A to understand the reasons he could not bring his complaint to us earlier. We have also considered the time the Trust has taken to respond to Mr A.

8. Mr A’s complaint was brought to us previously. We closed this case in November 2021 as Mr A did not respond to our requests for further information, which we needed to further consider his complaint. We reopened the case in April 2022 after Mr A gave us the information we requested.

9. The events in Mr A’s complaint happened in April and July 2019, which is when he contacted us with his complaint too early. So, we consider these are the dates he was first aware of his complaint, and our time limit expired in July 2020 at the latest.

10. Mr A made his original complaint to the Trust in May 2020, which is just inside the 12 months the NHS Complaints Regulations allow for making a complaint to the NHS. We have reviewed the letter Mr A sent to the Trust on 23 May 2020, in which he refers to an earlier letter sent in April 2019, which he says the Trust did not respond to. We have not seen evidence of this letter, so we are taking May 2020 as the date of his original complaint to the Trust.

11. Mr A originally sent us a properly made complaint (complete and ready for us to consider) on 28 September 2020 and came back to us with the information we needed to further consider his complaint on 27 April 2022. So, his approaches to us were outside our time limit on both occasions.

12. Mr A sent letters to the Trust on 23 May, 19 June and 3 July 2020. While he wrote several letters, only the one dated 23 May 2020 complains about the specific issues he has raised with us.

13. The Trust’s responses are dated 16 August 2019, 30 June 2020 and 7 August 2020. All these responses contain information about our service, and we know Mr A was already aware of our service as he contacted us in July 2019. There was a delay between when he became aware of his reasons to complain and when he first complained to the Trust. This significantly contributed to the delay in bringing the complaint to us. Mr A has given no reason to justify this delay.

14. There was also a gap of four months between Mr A telling us he was too ill to continue his complaint with us in November 2021 and contacting us with the information to reopen the complaint on 27 April 2022.

15. We have contacted Mr A many times via email and phone and asked for more information about why he was not able to continue his complaint with us at the time.

16. During this time, he copied us into several emails about other matters, such as COVID-19 vaccinations and a subject access request.

17. When we spoke to Mr A, he told us he could only deal with one complaint at a time, and he believed the emails were relevant to the complaint with us.

18. We have been unable to obtain any further reasons why he was unable to give us information to continue his complaint between November 2021 and March 2022, despite giving him several opportunities to explain. While he says he was too ill to respond, we can see he sent various emails to other organisations during this time. In our letter of 29 November 2021, we also explained our time limit:

‘You are able to bring your complaint back to us. Please bear in mind our time limits when you are in a position to send this information to us. We can only consider complaints made within 12 months of the date you became aware of the issue. We can consider complaints outside of this time frame however, we have to be satisfied there are special circumstances which we consider reasonable.’

19. As such, Mr A was aware of our time limit, and we explained we would need to see a reason to extend it. At this point, his complaint was already outside our time limit, so we consider it reasonable to expect him to have sent us the information we asked for as soon as he was able to do so. Given what we have set out above, it appears Mr A chose to pursue different concerns throughout January, February and March 2022 before coming back to us.

20. For this reason, we have decided not to extend our time limit, and we will not take any further action on this complaint.

21. We are sorry to hear of the events that have led Mr A to make his complaint and the distress this has caused him. We appreciate the effort he has made to raise his concerns.

1. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust). The complaint falls outside our time limit, and we have decided there is no good reason for us to extend our time limit to consider it further.

2. We understand our decision may be disappointing for Mr A, but we will explain the reasons for it and the factors we have considered in our primary investigation of his complaint.