Decision Report 201803355

Summary

Mrs C complained about the care and treatment that her late mother-in-law (Mrs A) received when she attended the emergency department at University Hospital Monklands on two separate occasions. Mrs A was also under the care of a consultant surgeon at the time.

We took independent advice from a consultant in emergency medicine and a general surgeon. We found that the majority of the care and treatment provided in the emergency department was reasonable. However, we also found that the on-call surgical doctors did not make Mrs A's consultant surgeon aware of her attendances to the emergency department. Therefore, we upheld this aspect of Mrs C's complaint. The board said that they had already taken action to address this issue so we asked them to provide evidence of this.

Mrs C also complained that the board failed to handle her complaint reasonably and in particular that the board did not respond to all the points of her complaint. We found that the board provided a response to the majority of the concerns Mrs C raised and, therefore, we did not uphold this aspect of Mrs C's complaint.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Apologise to Mrs C for failing to make Mrs A's consultant surgeon aware of her attendances to the emergency department. The apology should meet the standards set out in the SPSO guidelines on apology available at www.spso.org.uk/information-leaflets.

We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.