Black Country hospitals exposed: Patient died days after discharged and kidney removed in error
A terminally-ill patient was wrongly discharged from New Cross Hospital just days before dying, an investigation has found.
It is one of a series of serious hospital blunders, including two in the Black Country, which have been laid bare after the details of dozens of NHS investigations were released.
A tear in the heart which was misdiagnosed as a blood clot, a man given the all-clear before two months later being told that he had lung cancer and a failure to flag up that a patient had pink urine are just some of the shocking cases unveiled in the report.
Details of such investigations have not been made public before.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Julie Mellor has published the report online in a bid to highlight failings in care and give confidence to people who are looking to make complaints about treatment they or their family have received.
In one case at Walsall Manor Hospital, a patient had a kidney removed when she should have been given chemotherapy.
The unnecessary operation led to the woman suffering bowel damage until she died 20 months later.
Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust paid £4,000 to the patient's family and medical director Amir Khan apologised for the level of care provided.
At Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital, a terminally-ill woman, who couldn't even walk up the stairs, was incorrectly discharged from hospital.
She died just days after being readmitted into hospital and the trust has apologised and paid her family £750.
The report, which refers to the patient as Ms P, said: "Ms P was known to have an existing hemiparesis – a weakness of one side of the body – caused by metastatic disease.
"However, there was no assessment of her disability or deterioration in her disease status. The nursing staff also failed to properly assess whether she could manage at home.
"Ms P was unable to cope at home and had to spend the night on the sofa because she could not manage the stairs. Although she was taken back to hospital by ambulance the next day and she died shortly after, we could not link the failings to the subsequent decline in her health.
"However, the failings caused considerable distress to Ms P and her family who had to look after her at home and witness the distress she was in." The report also criticised the trust for taking too long to deal with a subsequent complaint about the woman's care.
Details of 81 investigations the ombudsman has completed are now available for the public to search online.
Ombudsman Julie Mellor said: "Our investigations highlight the devastating impact that failures in public services can have on the lives of individuals and their families. For the first time, MPs, members of the public and service providers will be able to go online and see the types of complaints that we have investigated.
Complaints
"This will help MPs to see what complaints have been made about public services in their constituency and will help provide confidence to people to complain when they see what happened to other people. We are modernising the way we do things so we can help more people with their complaints and to help bodies in jurisdiction learn from mistakes other organisations have made to help them decide what action to improve their services."
In another case, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust misdiagnosed a man as having a blood clot when he actually had a tear in the blood vessel from his heart to his body.
