MORE THAN 200 patients and their families have accused the country’s foremost health watchdog of letting them down by taking sides with the NHS organisations it is supposed to be investigating.
A damning report claims the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) is “secretive”, “defensive” and “adds to the already great distress” of families who have suffered harm at the hands of the health service.
The Patients Association’s report was compiled after it was contacted by NHS patients and their families who were angry at the way they had been treated by the PHSO, which was itself set up to investigate complaints of unfair or poor service.
It comes as bereaved parents whose babies died following a series of failings at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust called for the resignation of the ombudsman for failing properly to investigate the scandal and refusing to admit its own mistakes.
An independent inquiry last week found that 11 babies and one mother died as a result of “a lethal mix” of failures in a “seriously dysfunctional” maternity unit at Furness General Hospital, which is run by the trust. Parents told the inquiry how the ombudsman refused to investigate what was happening at the hospital.
The Patients Association’s report found that:
● More than half of the patients claimed the PHSO “takes sides with the organisation it is investigating”
● Nearly half felt it was “unwilling to challenge” NHS organisations
● The ombudsman “fails to investigate complaints fully”
● The watchdog “produces final reports full of inaccuracies”
● It “makes patients feel like they are a nuisance for complaining”.
Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said: “Patients feel completely let down by the PHSO; which overlooks or ignores evidence, takes far too long to communicate with families, is dismissive and insensitive, and leaves patients feeling that they are in the wrong for raising a complaint.”
The Morecambe Bay families say the ombudsman’s failings were further highlighted by the independent inquiry into what happened at Furness hospital in Barrow, Cumbria, between 2004 and 2013.
This inquiry uncovered failures “at every level” from the maternity unit to those responsible for regulating and monitoring the trust which runs the unit.
Among the “shocking” problems found were substandard clinical competence, extremely poor working relationships between different staff groups and repeated failure to investigate adverse incidents properly and learn lessons.
When babies died, midwives conspired to cover up the failings, the inquiry, chaired by Dr Bill Kirkup suggested.
But parents of babies who died say that when they first raised their concerns about standards of care at the hospitals their fears were dismissed by the PHSO.
James Titcombe, along with Carl Hendrickson, Liza Brady and Simon Davey, who all lost babies at the troubled hospital, last night called for the head of the PHSO, Dame Julie Mellor, to step down.
The PHSO said that since Dame Julie arrived at the organisation in 2012, it had made substantial improvements, including moving from investigating hundreds to thousands of complaints. A spokesman said: “Our decisions are independent, robust and evidence based. We recognise that we still need to change our service and culture further, by making it less complex and confusing and making it more empathetic. We are engaged in a public consultation to develop a set of promises to service users.” The watchdog apologised “unreservedly” for failing to investigate Mr Titcombe’s complaint in 2009.