A practice in the Oxfordshire area

3. Mr A complains an adequate examination of his son was not carried out at the Health Centre on 23 January 2023.

4. Mr A says as a result of the above, his son’s illness was not diagnosed appropriately and he sadly died 48 hours after the appointment. This has negatively impacted both parents’ mental health. They feel devastated to have lost their son and it will impact them for the rest of their lives.

5. Mr A wants the doctor concerned to face punishment and be struck off the medical register.

6. Mr A told us the outcomes he is seeking are to punish the doctor concerned and strike them off the medical register at the very least. We explained these are not outcomes we can achieve. Our role is to drive public service improvements and therefore we focus on outcomes such as getting the organisation to acknowledge its mistakes, apologise, provide explanations, make service improvements and pay financial remedy (in limited circumstances).

7. Mr A has agreed to take his complaint to the GMC as this is the organisation best placed to look into the conduct of doctors and investigate their fitness to practice if they consider this appropriate. If the GMC decides to investigate and finds the doctor’s fitness to practice is ‘impaired’ there are various outcomes it can reach, the most severe is removal from the medical register. Further information can be found in the following link: What happens at the end of an investigation - GMC (gmc-uk.org)

8. If Mr A wishes to bring his complaint back to us in the future, we would urge him to do so promptly. We would like to point out the rules relating to our time limit. 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 also consider the time the organisation has taken to respond. We can see that the Health Centre provided its final response to Mr A on 21 June 2023, but Mr A did not make his complaint to us until 7 March 2024. If Mr A brought his complaint back to us, we would need to consider the reasons that he did not bring his complaint to us sooner. We would consider his reasons but might not look into his complaint if we consider he could have complained to us sooner.

9. We thank Mr A and his partner for taking the time to speak to us about the complaint and bring the concerns to our attention. We recognise this conversation was a difficult one and hope they are able to obtain the support they need going forwards.

1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about a practice in the Oxfordshire area (the Health Centre). We consider that the complaint is better suited to the General Medical Council (the GMC) because Mr A wants a doctor’s conduct to be investigated specifically. The GMC is the organisation that can look at the doctor’s fitness to practice as a whole and also look into the doctor’s conduct.

2. We are sorry to hear that Mr A’s son lost his life in such unexpected circumstances and acknowledge the ongoing distress and negative impact on his/his partner’s mental health. Mr A should make an appointment with his GP for support if he thinks this could be helpful or speak to Cruse or other local bereavement services. Their details can be found through his GP or online.