GP practice did not appropriately treat or manage patient's pain

What happened

Mr H visited the GP Practice and Trust on 11 occasions in 2013 with pain in his toe that became more severe as time went on. Eventually, following an X-ray, the Trust diagnosed that Mr H had a bone infection. Mr H then had to have an operation to have part of his right toe amputated.

Mr H complained that if the Practice and the Trust had diagnosed and treated him appropriately, by providing him with an X-ray earlier, the partial amputation of his right toe could have been avoided. He said he experienced severe pain which hindered his mobility. He said he also suffered a financial loss as he became dependent on help from other people for his daily needs and needed to take taxis regularly.

What we found

We partly upheld Mr H's complaint about the Practice. We found it got a number of things wrong. It did not appropriately manage Mr H's pain, did not appropriately treat him on two occasions, and prescribed antibiotics at a lower dose than recommended and without seeing him. However, we found it referred him to the Trust appropriately. We did not find that these shortcomings led to a delay in Mr H being diagnosed with a bone infection or that it contributed to the partial amputation of his toe.

We did not uphold Mr H's complaint about the Trust as we found no service failure in its care and treatment.

Putting it right

The Practice apologised to Mr H and gave him a full written acknowledgement of the errors that we had identified. It also paid him £1,500 for the injustice he suffered.