Warning as 45% of Scots health complaints upheld

Helen McArdle

25 Aug 2011

Almost half of all complaints to an official watchdog about health services in Scotland in the past year have been upheld.

Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Jim Martin said he had received 888 allegations from patients and their families against the ambulance service, GPs, hospitals, opticians, dentists and pharmacists.

He found 402 (45%) of the issues raised were valid.

The figures were revealed as the Ombudsman launched his annual report yesterday.

He said out of all the complaints made to him last year about health boards, councils and other bodies, more than a third (34%) had been fully or partly upheld.

It is unacceptable. Too many authorities are getting complaints wrong first time rather than right first time

He criticised the organisations for failing to handle complaints properly.

Mr Martin said: “This scale of upheld complaints is unacceptable.

“Too many authorities are getting complaints wrong first time rather than right first time.”

Issues were raised in 64 cases about the attitude of healthcare staff, poor communication and breach of confidentiality or dignity, Mr Martin revealed.

Scotland’s largest health board, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, was the subject of 127 complaints, with GPs and GP practices attracting 169 complaints.

In one case, a 57-year-old woman, known only as Libby, took her own life days after being discharged from hospital in January. Her brother-in-law, called Mr C in the document, brought a complaint against Dumfries and Galloway Health Board over what he called “error upon error” after Libby was diagnosed with bowel cancer in March 2010.

Mr Martin found doctors had withdrawn medication used to treat her depression without reasonable psychiatric evaluation, then discharged her from hospital following bowel surgery without reasonable aftercare instructions, leading to a deterioration of her condition. She later twice attempted suicide in a mental health unit and took her own life on January 11, days after leaving hospital.

The man, whose wife has also suffered bowel cancer, said: “Their treatments could not have been more different if they’d been written in black and white. Libby had us to try and fight her corner, but there a lots of people who have no-one.

“That’s why it was so important to us about pursuing this complaint, to try and make sure no-one else has to suffer as my sister-in-law did.”

Margaret Watt, chairwoman for the Scotland Patients Association, said the high level of complaints being upheld by the watchdog could help restore patients’ faith in the complaints process.

She said: “The confidence of some of our patients in the Ombudsman is very, very low. That’s sad, because the Ombudsman does a good job and we have to encourage people if they think they have a case to get in touch with him.

“I would like to see the Ombudman have a lot more teeth.”

Labour said the statistics raised concerns with diagnosis or clinical treatment amid health cuts. The party’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: “It is worrying so many complaints were upheld, especially when they relate to diagnosis and clinical treatment.

“Getting a diagnosis wrong or administering the incorrect treatment could literally be matter of life and death.

“I fear these concerning statistics are a direct result of the SNP cuts to frontline NHS staff.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Complaints procedures are a matter for the public body concerned.

“It is important public service providers have easy to use and robust systems for dealing with complaints, and that complaints are acted on to improve services.”

Reproduced with permission of Herald and Times Group