East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust

3. Mrs K complains about the following aspects of care the Trust provided when Mr K was in hospital between 28 December 2020 and 30 January 2021:

• a doctor advising her they would not put Mr K on a ventilator or admit him to intensive care if he deteriorated. She feels this showed a disregard for Mr K’s human rights and says the way the doctor told her this news was unacceptable • hospital staff failing to check if Mr K had developed sepsis sooner. She says this is despite Mr K complaining of pain in his foot and being confused and agitated • the vascular team dismissing Mr K having surgery and giving the family conflicting information about this • poor communication from hospital staff despite visiting restrictions due to COVID-19 • Mr K having a number of falls in hospital • hospital staff moving Mr K around different wards during his stay • poor end of life care.

4. Mrs K feels the poor care and treatment resulted in Mr K’s untimely death from sepsis. She says the issues caused her extreme emotional distress and worry.

5. As an outcome to the complaint, Mrs K would like an acknowledgement of failings, an apology, service improvements, and financial compensation.

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.

8. We consider Mrs K became aware of the issues in Mr K’s care around the time of his hospital admission in January 2021. She referred her complaint to us on 30 January 2024 and so her complaint is two years outside our time limit. We considered the reasons why Mrs K could not bring her complaint to us sooner and the time the Trust took to respond to her.

9. Mrs K raised her complaint with the Trust not long after Mr K’s death on 16 February 2021. The Trust responded to her complaint in a timely way on 7 May. The Trust advised Mrs K that she could refer her complaint to us and advised her she should do this straight away because of our time limit.

10. Mrs K referred her complaint to us two years and eight months after the Trust’s complaint response. Mrs K and her daughters told us this delay was because Mrs K had found her complaint too distressing to follow up.

11. Given the significant amount of time which passed, we do not feel it is reasonable for us to put our time limit to one side for the reasons provided. We understand why dealing with the complaint was painful for Mrs K. We consider she could have asked her daughters to help her refer the complaint to us if needed.

12. Mrs K’s daughters told us they were unaware the Trust had provided a response and of our time limit. As this was Mrs K’s complaint, it would have been up to her to share this information with them if she wished.

13. In reaching this decision, we are in no way underestimating how painful these events have been for Mrs K. We are sincerely sorry we cannot help her further with her complaint due to our time limit.

1. We were very sorry to hear of the death of Mrs K’s husband, Mr K, and the devastating impact this had had. We can see the events leading up to Mr K’s death continue to have a profound impact on her. We were also sorry to hear Mrs K has concerns about Mr K’s care and treatment from the Trust.

2. We have carefully considered Mrs K’s concerns. Her complaint falls outside of our time limit and we have decided it is not reasonable for us to put our time limit aside to consider it further. We appreciate this will be a disappointing decision to Mrs K. We have fully explained our reasons for our decision in this statement.