Decision Report 201404929

Summary

Mrs C contacted her medical practice to get the flu vaccine for her young son. The practice provided an appointment three weeks away, but Mrs C asked if an earlier appointment would be available as her son had some outstanding health conditions. The practice said there was no urgency for the appointment so an earlier appointment was not offered.

Mrs C complained that the practice had not considered her son's individual health conditions, as they should have. She also complained that they had unreasonably told her she could leave the practice and did not respond to her complaint reasonably.

We took independent advice from one of our medical advisers. The adviser was satisfied that Mrs C's son did not exhibit any of the conditions which would qualify him as a priority patient to get the flu vaccine. For this reason, we did not uphold this complaint.

We also could not establish from the evidence available, the context in which the option to leave the practice was brought up and did not uphold this complaint. While we decided the practice had, on balance, reasonably responded to the complaint we did note areas for improvement and made a recommendation to address this.

Recommendations

We recommended that the practice:

• include, in final complaint replies, information about how a patient can progress their complaint if they remain unhappy.