Family gets payout over mother’s death after blood clot
A widower whose wife died from an undiagnosed blood clot has received a payout from a Black Country hospital.
David Laughton, the chief executive of the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust which runs New Cross, has also apologised to Marie Rollason’s family after her ‘avoidable’ death in 2015.
The hospital trust has admitted liability and paid out an undisclosed sum to her husband Lee Rollason after an inquest concluded neglect had played a role in Mrs Rollason’s death.
The mother-of-two attended A&E at New Cross Hospital on December 19, 2015, after suffering a head injury in a fall at her home in Penn.
She was discharged but then went on to suffer episodes of fainting and a loss of consciousness across the next four days.
After collapsing in her GP surgery on December 23, the 43-year-old was taken to New Cross for a second time.
She was wrongly discharged after a junior doctor concluded that the results of an ECG test were ‘okay’. The junior doctor decided, in consultation with a consultant doctor, that she was fit to go home.
But an internal hospital investigation found that she ‘would probably have survived’ if she had remained in hospital and had the cause of her collapses assessed by a cardiologist.
This did not happen and Mrs Rollason collapsed and died of a pulmonary embolism six days later.
A subsequent inquest heard how Mrs Rollason might have survived if the clot had been detected earlier, with senior coroner Zafar Siddique outlining how the lack of tests to detect the blood clot and the failure to admit her to hospital amounted to ‘a gross failure in basic medical care’.
Mr Rollason, 45, recalled how the family, including their two children, Lewis and Owen, aged 19 and 14, had hoped Marie was on the road to recovery following her second visit to hospital.
He said: “When Marie and I heard that her ECG test had come back normal we were hugely relieved and went on to enjoy a really wonderful Christmas. She seemed to be fainting less during that time and we genuinely hoped she had turned a corner.
“Three years on we remain totally devastated at losing Marie and the fact that it could have been avoided remains very difficult to take. While it is welcome that the NHS Trust has apologised, it is simply never going to change what has happened.
“No amount of money will ever make up for what has happened and our primary aim of taking this forward was to ensure that lessons could be learned so no other family faces what we have.
“Marie was my soulmate and I miss her so much – these problems cannot be repeated in the future.” According to Irwin Mitchell, the solicitors instructed by the Rollason family to take up the case, Mr Loughton CBE has written to Mr Rollason offering his own and the Trust’s ‘condolences and apologies’, saying that action had been taken to ‘prevent the same circumstances arising which sadly led to the avoidable death’ of Mrs Rollason.
He reportedly added: “Your wife failed to receive the standard of care that she was entitled to expect and in consequence we have also let down yourself and your family.”
Thomas Riis-Bristow, specialist medical negligence lawyer at Irwin Mitchell’s Birmingham office who represents the family, said: “This is a truly devastating case which highlights the huge consequences that even the most basic failings in care can have.
“While nothing will ever change what has happened, we are pleased to have at least helped our clients to gain justice regarding their loss and the unacceptable errors which led to it.
“This case must be a reminder to the NHS of the need for test results to always be thoroughly examined and reported correctly – the issues seen here simply should not be allowed to happen again.”
