Private healthcare firm chased me for cash after hubby died in their care
Widow’s trauma after gastric op
A PRIVATE healthcare firm billed a grieving widow just weeks after her husband died in their care.
Lecturer Phil Morris, 48, died from lack of oxygen four days after having a £12,000 gastric sleeve operation.
Spire – the UK’s second biggest private health firm – started sending monthly bills to the dad of one’s widow just three weeks after he died.
Dana, 49, who is suing Spire, said: “Phil was our world. He went into hospital for a treatment that would’ve changed his life for the better.
“Not only did Spire fail my husband, they had the temerity to try to claw the money back for the treatment, which ultimately led to his death.
“Phil had paid £1,000 for the operation but I had to pay £1,100 for the next 10 months.
It was wildly insensitive.
“There was no acknowledgement of the fact he had died in their care, just bills.
“Every time I got a bill I was reminded of the catalogue of errors the treatment I was paying for killed my husband.”
An inquest begins today at South London coroner’s court in Croydon. Phil, who went private after an NHS backlog, was diagnosed with type one diabetes in his 20s, and later developed type two diabetes.
He was 22st and hoped the operation at St Anthony’s hospital in Sutton, South London, would get him down to 15st. His surgery on December 6 2021 was scheduled two months before Phil, also an actor and author, was due to start a PhD at the University of East Anglia.
Following the op, he was struggling to breathe and talk. Dana claimed Phil was allowed outside in the cold for more than an hour without oxygen in just a hospital gown. Dana said a tube to help him breathe was inserted into the wrong airway. Phil died hours later.
Dana, from Epsom, Surrey, said: “I was completely in shock and still am to this day. We miss him every minute of every day.
“It feels like an anvil of grief is on your chest.”
Both she and son Orson, 14, were diagnosed with PTSD.
Spire Healthcare said: “We offer our very sincere condolences for their sad loss. “We take patient and family feedback seriously. We will continue to offer appropriate ongoing support.”