Investigation reports

The family of a woman who died from lung cancer said that her GP Practice left her without guidance or support following her discharge from hospital. We partially upheld the complaint.

A woman complained that her late brother was not given the best possible chance to recover following gall bladder surgery. We upheld parts of the complaint, and were critical of the serious adverse incident report prepared by the Northern Trust.

We found that the Belfast Trust did not properly assess a man’s healthcare needs before his admission to a nursing home. 

We asked it to apologise to the complainant and to review all applications for continuing healthcare from the last three years.  

We made recommendations for service improvement after we found failings in the way the Belfast Trust investigated the theft of a care home resident’s wedding ring.

A parent who acted as a carer for her son with special needs complained that a six-month delay in her family being allocated a social worker impacted her financially and mentally.

We upheld the complaint but found no evidence of bias against the parent by the Trust. 

We investigated a man’s concerns about the death of his elderly mother. 

We found that while she suffered from a number of medical conditions which could have caused her death at any time, the immediate cause was Covid-19.

A woman complained about how long it took the Northern Health Trust to provide her late son with a routine test for heart disease, and about its subsequent failure to monitor his condition.

We made a number of recommendations to the Belfast Trust after we found failures in the way it treated a patient with a fractured leg. 

We concluded that delays in removing her leg cast and in monitoring her pressure sores caused sepsis and contributed significantly towards her premature death.