Trust failed to compensate daughter for failings in her father's care

What happened

Mr B was admitted to hospital with pain and immobility in his leg and hip. During the admission, the Trust diagnosed Mr B with cancer and other serious problems. Mr B later died. His daughter, Ms B, complained about several aspects of the care given to her father. Among her concerns were poor pain management; a lack of help with eating and drinking; a lack of investigations into Mr B's illnesses; failure to meet Mr B's cultural requirements; unexplained wounds and injuries; lack of respect; prescription of medication that made Mr B unwell; lack of senior medical review; delay diagnosing cancer and informing Ms B of this; and poor communication.

After a previous assessment of the complaint, we asked the Trust to give another complaint response, as the first one was inadequate.

The Trust then apologised to Ms B and acknowledged several failings. It also explained a number of service improvements it had introduced. Ms B asked for a compensation payment but the Trust refused. Ms B complained to us as she did not consider that the apologies and service improvements were reasonable, and she was dissatisfied that the Trust did not award compensation.

What we found

There were failings in most of the issues Ms B put to us. The Trust had apologised for these failings and taken steps to stop the failings happening again and improve the overall standards of care.

The catalogue of failings had had a major impact on Ms B and worsened her bereavement. It was not reasonable for the Trust to refuse to pay her compensation.

We partly upheld Ms B's complaint.

We did not think that the Trust had gone far enough in attempting to resolve Ms B's complaint.

Putting it right

The Trust paid Ms B £1,500.