University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

5. Ms N complains about the care and treatment the Trust provided to her mother, Mrs E, between March and December 2021. She specifically complains it:

• did not provide appropriate treatment for Mrs E’s cancer • restricted access to CT scans when transferring care to another hospital.

6. Ms N also complains the Trust failed to answer all her questions in the complaint from December 2022 onwards.

7. Ms N says her mother had a good prognosis and could have been cancer free if the Trust had provided the right treatment at right time. She says by delaying access to the CT scans, the Trust caused a delay to her mother seeking treatment at other hospitals. Ms N says the Trust’s handling of her complaint caused her further distress.

8. Ms N says the Trust’s actions caused her mother’s death, which she believes was avoidable. This has compounded Ms N’s grief and distress.

9. As an outcome to this complaint, Ms N is seeking the following: • an apology • service improvements • financial remedy • changes to processes to ensure there is no discriminatory behaviour.

Treatment and transfer of care

12. 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 have discussed this with Ms N to understand the reasons why she did not complain sooner. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to Ms N.

13. Ms N complains the Trust did not provide appropriate treatment for her mother’s cancer. This treatment took place between May (when the Trust diagnosed Mrs E with lung cancer) to December 2021 (when Mrs E changed her treatment to another consultant in a different hospital).

14. From our discussions with Ms N, we understand there was no one incident which caused them to change treatment options, but rather growing concerns over a series of consultations. Therefore we have taken the date of knowledge to complain as December 2021.

15. Our legislation means a complaint should have been referred to us by December 2022.

16. Ms N first brought her complaint to us in March 2024. This is 15 months outside of our 12 month time limit.

17. At this point, we identified the Trust had only responded to 17 out of the 40 questions Ms N had raised with it. Following our discussions with the Trust, it agreed to provide a formal response to Ms N’s outstanding questions. As local resolution was ongoing we closed Ms N’s complaint in November 2024, with information sent to Ms N to come back to us promptly if she remained dissatisfied with the Trust’s final response.

18. Whilst Ms N’s complaint was out of time for our consideration we did not fully explore the time limit at this stage. This is because we were focussed on Ms N getting further answers from the Trust, which could potentially have resolved her concerns without an investigation by our organisation.

19. We understand the Trust provided its final response to Ms N’s outstanding questions on 5 March 2025.

20. We note Ms N emailed our organisation twice with queries in May 2025. On one of these queries, Ms N was seeking clarification about our time limits and asked if she had until March 2026 to bring her complaint back to us. Unfortunately, we did not respond to this email to clarify our time limits and that Ms N will need to bring her complaint back to us as soon as possible for our consideration.

21. Ms N brought her complaint back to us on 3 March 2026.

22. We recognise there has been a communication error on our part in that we did not respond to Ms N’s email in May 2025 to clarify our time limits, and we apologise for this. Despite this, we have been fair in our consideration of Ms N’s complaint and have not allowed this to make a difference to our decision.

23. We have carefully considered the time it took Ms N to bring her first complaint to us in March 2024. Our focus of our decision is on this earlier period as the complaint was already outside of our 12 month time limit.

24. Ms N told us when they initially moved Mrs E’s care in December 2021 they were still experiencing issues with the Trust in accessing previous test results and health records. Ms N said along with caring for her mother, she also had problems with work and had taken leave for stress. She said during this time she had brain fog and was unable to think clearly.

25. She told us her mother sadly died unexpectedly in February 2022, and she found her grief difficult to manage. Ms N said she was signed off work until July 2022.

26. We appreciate Ms N’s grief would have meant preparing a complaint about her mother’s care would have been difficult for her. Therefore, we accept her reasons for not commencing a complaint before December 2022.

27. Following Ms N’s complaint to the Trust in December 2022, it provided its response in March 2023. This is a period of three months. We would have reasonably expected Ms N to bring her complaint to us without delay once she received the Trust’s final response.

28. Ms A told us that after she received the response from the Trust she felt shocked, considered the response lacked empathy and it did not address all her concerns. Ms N told us she continued to struggle with the grief of losing her mother as it approached the anniversary of her death. She said she had started a new job and had several health concerns throughout the year in 2023. Ms N said she was also completing a PhD at this time.

29. Ms A told us she contacted the General Medical Council (GMC) to raise a complaint about the doctor who had treated her mother at the Trust. She said the GMC responded to her concerns in May 2023, where it signposted her to bring her complaint to us.

30. Between September 2023 to February 2024, Ms N was seeking legal advice and had approached multiple solicitors regarding a medical negligence claim. We understand she was unsuccessful in pursuing a legal claim.

31. We accept Ms N was impacted by the grief of losing her mother in 2022. This is clear from her absence from work and the time taken to revisit events to start her complaint in December 2022. Once Ms N did start her complaint and received the Trust’s response, we can see she pursued her complaint through other avenues including the GMC and various solicitors over a period of 11 months.

32. We recognise this was a difficult time for Ms N to bring a complaint about the treatment her mother received while dealing with the impact of her death. From the information provided, we cannot see there were significant factors present at the time which prevented Ms N progressing her complaint to us from March 2023 to March 2024.

33. On the evidence Ms N has supplied us with, we have seen she continued to pursue her complaint to other bodies and received responses including the GMC in May 2023 and three solicitor’s firms (in September 2023, January and February 2024). Each of these created another opportunity for Ms N to refer her complaint to us much earlier than she did. We therefore do not consider there are sufficient reasons for us to waive our time limit in Ms N’s case regarding this part of her complaint.

Complaint handling

34. Ms N says when she first complained to the Trust in December 2022, it only responded to 23 of the 40 questions she had raised. She is unhappy the Trust did not respond to all her concerns.

35. We understand the 17 outstanding questions were mainly regarding the treating doctor’s conduct during consultations and their medical advice regarding the treatment options available to Mrs E. We understand Ms N continues to be unhappy the Trust has not provided honest answers to those questions.

36. When Ms N first brought her complaint to us in March 2024, we agreed with the Trust it would respond to her outstanding 17 questions in line with its internal policies.

37. The Trust provided its final response to these questions on 28 February 2025.

38. Our Service Model Guidance outlines the reasons we may decide not to investigate.

They include where the investigation would not be practical and would not reach a satisfactory conclusion, so there would be no value in providing a response through an investigation. Another reason we may decide not to investigate is if the outcome sought is not achievable.

39. We can see in the Trust’s second response, it had reviewed Mrs E’s medical records, national guidance for the relevant cancer treatment Mrs E received and GMC, Good Medical Practice guidelines. It also reviewed historic patient experience feedback it had received for the treating doctor.

40. The Trust provided an overview of its consultation appointments between Mrs E and the treating doctor. It said during Mrs E’s treatment it arranged a multi-disciplinary team meeting (MDT) between its consultant oncologists, and those based at Royal Marsden hospital as well as consultant thoracic surgeons based at Royal Brompton hospital.

41. It apologised for the family’s experience with the treating doctor. However, it explained it could not confirm what the doctor precisely said to Mrs E, as the medical records did not align with Ms N’s account of the doctor’s behaviour towards her mother.

42. As we are impartial, we must make decisions based on fact and evidence.

43. We recognise the way in which things are said and how they are meant are open to interpretation and each person involved in the same conversation can come away with a different perception of its contents and what happened. One person’s perception of what was said does not invalidate another person’s opposing perception of the same comment. Whilst we do not dispute Ms N’s recollection, unfortunately, we were not present at the time to independently know what, and how, things were said.

44. The only way we could achieve something with Ms N’s complaint, would be if there were independent evidence available to support a decision the Trust had not been honest in its responses. It seems unlikely this evidence would be available.

45. Linked to our decision on the time limit earlier, the evidence we would need to investigate is now from over five years ago. This would be another practical barrier to us looking at these issues further. For the reasons set out above, and having considered this complaint carefully, we think a detailed investigation would not reach a satisfactory conclusion or valuable response.

46. We thank Ms N for bringing her complaint to us and appreciate how distressing it has been to revisit what happened to her mother.

1. We have carefully considered Ms N’s complaint about University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust).

2. We were very sorry to hear of the circumstances of Ms N’s complaint and extend our sincere condolences on the loss of her mother, Mrs E.

3. We have looked carefully at the timeline of events of when Ms N complained about the care and treatment the Trust provided to her mother. Ms N’s complaint about her mother’s treatment falls outside of the legal time limit to bring a complaint to the Ombudsman. We have not seen strong enough reasons to put our time limit aside to consider this part of her complaint further.

4. With regards to Ms N’s complaint about the Trust failing to answer all her questions in her complaint, we have decided to not consider this complaint further. This is because we do not think an investigation would reach a satisfactory conclusion.