Investigation reports

Investigation finds that it took more than 6 months for the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust to respond to a patient’s complaint.

The Chief Executives of three health trusts have apologised after an error in recording a patient’s date of birth led to him being confused with another patient.

We concluded that the investigation by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust followed all relevant guidelines, but asked it to remind staff of the importance of routinely consulting the GPs of vulnerable adults when carrying out future investigations.

We found that the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust acted appropriately when stopping a patient's pain relief injections, but asked it to reflect on the best way to manage the issues around patients having treatments withdrawn that, to them, have resulted in benefits.

The Belfast Health & Social Care Trust is setting up a process to tell GPs when it has downgraded their referrals after we asked it to apologise to a patient who had complained about a delay in treatment.

We have asked the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, in consultation with the other Trusts and health and social care organisations, to agree a uniform approach for assessing all future applications for Continuing Healthcare in Northern Ireland.

We found that the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust did not provide a patient with a multi-disciplinary review prior to her discharge from the Royal Victoria Hospital.

We recommended that the Northern Health Trust apologise to a complainant after our investigation found failings in the care and treatment of her baby son and its handling of a Serious Adverse Incident (SAI) investigation.