2. Ms R complains the Trust added an incorrect clinical code to her clinical records after being in hospital in 2013.
3. Ms R explained the complaints team used this information to tell her she has a behavioural disorder and coding it this way was appropriate. She says this is causing distress and lost faith in the Trust.
4. Ms R wants an apology and a financial payment for the months spent making her complaint and the stress this caused.
5. In 1996, when Ms R was a child, she went to a psychology clinic twice due to her behaviour. No diagnosis was made, but Ms R says a letter was written saying ‘bad behaviour towards mum’.
6. In June 2019 Ms R was a patient of the Trust and asked to see some clinical records. She noticed a discharge summary about an operation to fit a pacemaker had an entry stating, ‘code Z865 - Personal history of other behaviour disorders’. She says this note was not there in 2013 when she was discharged from hospital after giving birth. The Trust has since said the entry was made after that hospital admission, but at the time clinical codes were not shown on discharge forms.
9. 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. We have discussed this with Ms R to understand the reasons why she did not come to us sooner. We have also considered the time the Trust took to respond to Ms R.
10. Ms R says she first became aware of the reason to complain in August 2022 and she complained to the Trust then. But, looking at the information she gave us we can see she knew there was a problem as early as 2019. She confirmed this was when she noticed the code on her discharge form. She explained it was only on review of the records she fully appreciated the issue. She made a SAR (subject access request) on 9 July 2020 and got her records in October 2020. We accept her date of awareness as October 2020.
11. The complaint should have come to us by October 2021. Ms R did not come to us until 16 months later in February 2023. This means the complaint is out of time.
12. We asked Ms R about why she did not complaint to us sooner. She said she asked her GP for more records. She then made a formal complaint to the Trust in August 2022. The Trust sent responses in September and November 2022 and finally in January 2023. Ms R came to us in February 2023.
13. We fully appreciate that from August 2022 to January 2023 Ms R was making her complaint. But, we have no reason to explain the delay between October 2021 and August 2022. We have explored this with Ms R but she did not give us any information about when she requested the information from the GP or if that information was different from what she already knew from the SAR. We have not seen a good reason for this 16-month delay to allow us to put the time limit to one side.
14. We appreciate this was a very stressful time for Ms R. We hope our statement clearly explains our decision and does not cause her any more upset.
1. We have carefully considered Ms R’s complaint about Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust). The complaint falls outside of our time limit and we have decided the reasons given for the delay are not enough for us to put this to one side.