We investigated a complaint by Mr A about the delay in obtaining an Out of Hours GP visit for his late wife, Mrs A, which was requested via 111.
Specifically, we considered whether Mrs A’s symptoms were appropriately assessed by the 111 service, which is provided by the Trust, and then whether the referrals to the OOH GP service (provided by the Health Board) were acted on appropriately and in a timely manner. We also investigated whether Mr A’s complaint was appropriately investigated, in line with relevance guidance, by both bodies.
We found that based on the information provided, Mr A’s calls to the 111 service were appropriately assessed, so did not uphold this complaint against the Trust. We found that while the OOH GP’s decision to wait for a home visit before admitting Ms A to hospital was appropriate, the time taken to contact and then visit Mrs A was significantly in excess of relevant timescales (by up to 12 hours). However this was unlikely to have affected Mrs A’s eventual outcome, although clearly caused distress to Mr & Mrs A. The complaint was therefore partly upheld against the Health Board taking into account the context of the significant pressure on the OOH GP service at the time. We found that the complaint should have been considered jointly, and 1 complaint response issued, and that the error in doing so was due to the Trust, but there were also issues with the accuracy and timeliness of the Health Board’s response. This was an injustice and caused confusion and further distress to Mr A, so this element of the complaint was upheld against both bodies.We investigated a complaint by Mr A about the delay in obtaining an Out of Hours GP visit for his late wife, Mrs A, which was requested via 111.
Specifically, we considered whether Mrs A’s symptoms were appropriately assessed by the 111 service, which is provided by the Trust, and then whether the referrals to the OOH GP service (provided by the Health Board) were acted on appropriately and in a timely manner. We also investigated whether Mr A’s complaint was appropriately investigated, in line with relevance guidance, by both bodies.
We found that based on the information provided, Mr A’s calls to the 111 service were appropriately assessed, so did not uphold this complaint against the Trust. We found that while the OOH GP’s decision to wait for a home visit before admitting Ms A to hospital was appropriate, the time taken to contact and then visit Mrs A was significantly in excess of relevant timescales (by up to 12 hours). However we found that this was unlikely to have affected Mrs A’s eventual outcome, although clearly caused distress to Mr & Mrs A. The complaint was therefore partly upheld against the Health Board, taking into account the context of the significant pressure on the OOH GP service at the time. We found that the complaint should have been considered jointly, and 1 complaint response issued, and that the error in doing so was due to the Trust, but there were also issues with the accuracy and timeliness of the Health Board’s response. This was an injustice and caused confusion and further distress to Mr A, so this element of the complaint was upheld against both bodies.