Health Board apology after Ombudsman's scathing criticism over way complaints are handled

For the first time, Ombudsman Nick Bennett has had reason to issue a Special Report under Section 22 of the Public Services Ombudsman (Wales) Act, a power he can invoke when a relevant body fails to carry out “explicitly agreed” actions within a specified time limit.

The Special Report considers the treatment of ‘Ms A’, who made a complaint to the Health Board in June 2014 regarding her son’s ophthalmic care.

In January 2016, she contacted the Ombudsman and asked him to investigate how her complaint had been handled.

Mr Bennett resolved Ms A’s complaint on the basis the Health Board agreed to carry out actions including the issuing of an apology, payment of compensation to Ms A for its complaint handling delays and confirmation of when a written response would be sent to her.

The actions were to be completed by March 15 this year. On May 16, Ms A received a cheque from the Health Board with no covering letter, apology or accompanying note.

She had waited for a total of 22 months, only to receive a partial response.

“I consider it unacceptable for a major public body to fail to take prompt and effective action to ensure agreed recommendations are properly implemented and to fail to live up to what are, in effect, binding promises to me as Ombudsman,” Mr Bennett wrote in his report.

“I would add that this is the first occasion I have had reason to issue a report under Section 22 of the Act against an NHS body for failing to implement agreed actions. It is not a decision I took lightly.”

The report noted an Ombudsman Casework Officer (CO) contacted the Health Board on March 16, 22 and 23 to chase up the missing actions, and on March 29 the CO received an electronic copy of a Health Board letter to Ms A, signed by the chief executive and dated March 15.

“At best, this was another example of tardy delay between composing a letter and actually sending it,” Mr Bennett surmised. “At worst, it was an attempt to imply, and influence me to conclude, that the Health Board had fully complied within the agreed deadline.

“The events giving rise to me issuing this report cause me serious concerns about the Health Board’s management of its complaints handling function and also, in light of the evidence, its candour and governance.”

The Ombudsman went on recommend the Health Board issue a complaint response to Ms A without further delay, provide her with a written apology for the continued delay, offer her a further “financial redress” of £100, and provide Mr Bennett with copies of the aforementioned letters.

He also asked for the Health Board’s chief executive to personally respond to him within two months of the Special Report, which is dated May 10, after “undertaking a review of the resources within the Concern Team and its capacity to deal with the number of complaints received in a timely way”.

Mr Bennett concluded his report by saying it was “disappointing to note” that despite his sending a draft copy of the document to the chief executive, he had received no acknowledgement of it nor any indication the recommendations made in the document would be implemented by the time he formally published the report.

Steve Moore, chief executive of Hywel Dda Health Board today (Tuesday) issued the following statement: "On behalf of the health board, I would like to apologise unreservedly for the way in which we handled a complaint about the care received by one of our patients, following a report by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales.

It is indefensible and should never have happened. I would like to confirm that all actions required by the Ombudsman have been under-taken, although I accept he did not receive my confirmation of this prior to writing his report, and for that I also apologise.

We acknowledged last year that our ability to respond in a timely way to all concerns was not fit for purpose, as we had acquired a significant backlog. This is not an excuse but an explanation of where we were. Since then, we have invested the time and money to address this and made significant improvements to our ability to manage concerns appropriately and in a timely way. We are also strengthening the integration of formal correspondence in the health board to prevent something like this from happening again. We want to ask our population to trust in us that we have made significant improvements and not to be discouraged from logging a concern as it is important to us to redress people who have not received the care they should expect and so we can learn and share valuable lessons to inform continual improvement to our services."