4. Mrs O complains the Practice did not complete timely investigations into her husband’s symptoms between 3 March 2020 to 27 September 2021, meaning he received a delayed diagnosis of terminal spinal lung cancer. She believes that if the cancer was diagnosed at an earlier stage, his prognosis may have been different.
5. As a result of her complaint, Mrs O wants the Practice to acknowledge failings in her husband’s care, an apology, service improvements and compensation.
8. The law says a person needs to make a complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem they wish to complain about (we call this the date of knowledge). We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after a year, unless we consider there a good reason to do so.
9. Mrs O complains about events that happened from 3 March 2020 to 27 September 2021. We consider 27 September 2021 to be the date of knowledge as this is when Mr O was given his cancer diagnosis. This means that when Mrs O brought her complaint to us in July 2024, her complaint was 22 months (one year 10 months), outside of our time limit.
10. We looked at the complaints Mrs O made to the Practice via NHS England, their responses, and asked for some more information about this to understand the reasons she did not bring the complaint to us sooner.
11. Mrs O made a formal complaint to the Practice via NHS England on 16 May 2022. NHS England provided her with its first investigation response on 21 October 2022. She reviewed the response with her advocate and returned to NHS England with her outstanding concerns on 24 November 2022.
12. On 13 June 2023, NHS England issued its final response and provided details of our Office should she remain unhappy with its response. In total, it took 13 months for the complaints process to conclude.
13. Following NHS England’s final response, Mrs O approached our Office, and her complaint was registered with us on 13 August 2024, 14 months after receiving the final response.
14. Mrs O explained that after receiving the final response from NHS England, she worked with her advocate to complete our complaint form, but this was not finalised as Mr O sadly died on 5 November 2023. Understandably, she asked her advocate for some time to grieve before carrying on with her complaint as she did not feel up to reliving past events.
15. On 22 January 2024, Mrs O’s advocate contacted her and asked if she wished to pursue her complaint. Mrs O confirmed she did, and the advocate advised her our complaint form had been revised to reflect her husband’s death. The advocate posted it to Mrs O for review the next day.
16. There was no further contact between Mrs O and her advocate until 11 April when the advocate called Mrs O to chase our complaint form. Mrs O told the advocate she had either ‘lost it or it has not arrived’. The advocate resent the complaint form the next day.
17. On 5 July, the advocacy lead called Mrs O advising that her allocated advocate was way from work. Mrs O confirmed that she had returned the complaint form and was happy for this to be sent to the PHSO.
18. On 5 August, Mrs O’s new advocate called to say that they had not received the complaint form and discussed ways of her providing a signature and sending the form to us.
19. We appreciate that Mrs O may not have been able to pursue her complaint as quickly as she would have liked before her husband’s death or immediately afterwards. Once she started the complaint form, we would have expected her to have brought the complaint to us sooner.
20. Mrs O was made aware of our service from 13 June 2023 when she received the final response from NHS England. She had access to our website, which details our time limit.
21. We think it would have been reasonable for Mrs O to have brought the complaint to us in January 2024, when the advocate contacted her to see if she was happy to pursue the complaint process and she confirmed she was. From this point, there is a delay of approximately eight months in bringing the complaint to us. Although Mrs O used the services of an advocate, there is no evidence of her proactively chasing or progressing the complaint herself.
22. We appreciate that Mrs O was dealing with some really difficult issues after the death of her husband, and this will have been stressful for her, we do not think the reasons behind the delay are enough for us to set our time limit aside.
23. For the reasons set out above, we have decided not to put our time limit to one side.
24. We are deeply sorry to hear about how upset Mrs O has been and how she has been affected. We understand how important this complaint is to her and thank her for sharing the details. It is important we consider and act within the law and regret any further upset this decision may cause. We hope this statement clearly explains the reasons why we will not be considering the complaint further.
1. We have carefully considered Mrs O’s complaint about the care and treatment the Practice gave to her husband, Mr O from 3 March 2020 to 27 September 2021. We are sorry to hear how much these events have upset her and how difficult has been for her since the events took place.
2. We have decided not to consider the complaint further because Mrs O brought her concerns to us outside of our time limit and we have not seen good cause to use our discretion to set the time limit aside.
3. We thank Mrs O for taking the time to tell us about her concerns. We recognise this decision will be disappointing and regret any distress this may cause.