Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust

3. Mr D complains about the Trust’s care of his wife in December 2022. Mr D complains the Trust discharged Mrs D on 2 December after wrongly telling her she did not have a fracture. On 5 December, the Trust called Mrs D back as staff found a fracture to her right hip after reviewing X-rays and CT scans.

4. Mr D says Mrs D’s health got worse because of the delay to her treatment. He says she was in constant pain until the Trust called her back in. Mr D says that Mrs D deteriorated so badly that she was left in a condition she would not recover from.

5. Mr D says he cared for his wife 24 hours a day. He says when she came home, at first he and his daughter had to help her into the house and help her go to bed and to the toilet. He says it was difficult for Mrs D to go to bed and he bought an electric chair for her to sleep in. Mr D says he had difficulty lifting Mrs D onto the chair and hurt his back.

6. Mr D would like an apology and financial compensation.

7. Mrs D had a right hip replacement in 2010.

8. Mrs D had a fall on 1 December 2022, causing two injuries to her right hip and head. The Trust admitted Mrs D to hospital overnight for observation and discharged her the next day.

9. On 5 December, the Trust called Mrs D back to the hospital because it had found a fracture on an X-ray report. Mrs D went to the fracture clinic on 6 December to decide how the fracture would be treated.

10. On 12 December, Mrs D had surgery for the fracture. Mrs D had discharge from her wound. Mrs D was given antibiotics for five days. The Trust discharged her later that month.

12. To decide if we should do a detailed investigation into a complaint, we look at what outcome the complainant wants to resolve their complaint. Our guidance says we can resolve a complaint without doing a detailed investigation if we can deliver the outcomes a complainant asks us to achieve, at an earlier point in our case handling process.

13. The Trust fully upheld Mr D’s complaint. The Trust admitted there was no record of a review of the X-ray results by doctors.

14. We looked at the actions the Trust has already taken to put things right. The Trust apologised for what it got wrong. It also shared this case with its executive team, the wider emergency department (ED) consultant team and at Trust meetings to stop it happening again.

15. We spoke to Mr D to discuss what the Trust has done and what he thinks is missing. Mr D says he wants an apology for the effect it had on him and his family. He also says he wants financial compensation that he could give to a good cause. He says he is happy for us to look at achieving this the without a long investigation.

16. We contacted the Trust to discuss this and it was happy to resolve the matter for Mr D. The Trust says it will send an apology to Mr D and his family. The Trust also says it will offer Mr D a payment of £950.

17. We spoke to Mr D about the actions the Trust agreed to take and Mr D is happy with this outcome. We think the Trust’s actions will resolve the complaint.

18. We recognise our resolution does not change what happened to Mrs D and sadly does not change the fact that she is no longer with us. We hope the apology and financial payment helps bring Mr D and his family closure. We wish them all the best in the future.

1. We have carefully considered Mr D’s complaint about Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (the Trust). Mr D told us about how distressing it was for him and his family to see his wife’s, Mrs D, pain after her discharge from hospital. We are sorry to hear this and saddened to hear that Mrs D has since died. We give our sympathy to Mr D and his family.

2. We did see that something went wrong with the Trust’s care and this affected Mr and Mrs D. We spoke to the Trust and it has agreed to send Mr D an apology letter and to pay him £950. We think these actions put things right and we will take no further action.