Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust

3. Mrs A complains about the care and treatment her father had at the Trust between November 2021 and March 2022. She complains:

• in November 2021 urgent surgery was not done because a scan showed a complete blockage in his bowel was missed • this meant her father was admitted to hospital six weeks later with a burst bowel and had to have urgent surgery for this • her father was very unwell for the next three months, was in agony, was put into an induced coma (when doctors put a patient into a state of deep unconsciousness to protect them) twice and died in March 2022.

4. As a result Mrs A says:

• her father died leaving her, her mum and brother devastated • her father has lost out on valuable time with grandchildren and great grandchildren.

5. Mrs A wants the Trust to accept what it did wrong, to provide an explanation and to make a financial payment to her.

7. The law says we cannot investigate a complaint where a person has (or had) the option to take legal action, unless we consider this is (or was) unreasonable in the circumstances. We have discussed this with Mrs A to understand her circumstances and the outcomes she wants. We do not consider whether legal action would succeed but whether it would be a reasonable option to look into.

8. Mrs A told us she wants £10,000 or more because the Trust admitted there was a missed opportunity to identify a mass in her father’s bowel from a CT scan he had in November 2021. She thinks her father might not have died if the hospital had done the operation he needed quickly.

9. She said the main outcomes she wants are a financial payment and an explanation for why the mass was missed. She recognises the Trust has already accepted failings, apologised and made service improvements. We discussed that she may be able to make a clinical negligence claim and how we thought legal action would be an appropriate route to explore at this stage. This is because of the Trust’s admission of failings, the level of payment she wants and there being nothing stopping her from looking into this. We discussed how Mrs A may get the explanations she wants as a result of a successful claim.

10. If Mrs A has any outstanding outcomes which have not been achieved through legal action, she can return to us with her complaint. If she wants to do this, we encourage her to do this as soon as possible, because we can only consider complaints made to us within a year of when someone becomes aware of a reason to complain. If Mrs A does take legal action, we would need to wait for this to conclude before we consider if any issues are outstanding.

11. We directed Mrs A to a charity named AvMa in case she wanted support with how to go about starting legal proceedings. She said she would make contact with this organisation.

12. We appreciate how distressing the events have been and continue to be for Mrs A and her family and are grateful to her for bringing this complaint to our attention.

1. We have carefully considered Mrs A’s complaint about Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust (the Trust). We think legal action is the most appropriate way forward.

2. We are very sorry to hear that Mrs A’s father died and we understand that she, her mother and brother are devastated by this. We know Mrs A feels her father lost out on valuable time with his grandchildren and great grandchildren and this must be difficult to come to terms with. We hope she finds our decision helpful.