A cancer patient has revealed that the NHS took 618 days to reply to his email, a period 13 times longer than Liz Truss was Prime Minister. Robert Fisk, who has incurable bowel cancer, said the response, when it finally arrived, showed the hospital had not understood either of his questions.
Two simple questions
Fisk, writing for the Daily Express, said he had asked two simple questions about keeping his GPs informed about his treatment and scheduling appointments at times that work for patients via the hospital complaints system. He sent the email in December 2024 and expected a reply within 48 hours or a similar reasonable time frame.
Instead, he received a reply 618 days later, after chasing up on several occasions. He noted that if he had known it would take that long, and if he did not have cancer, he would have sent the email and then boarded a round-the-world cruise from Southampton, adding that he could have cruised the world five times while waiting for a hospital to answer two simple questions.
Complaints system under strain
Fisk compared complaining about hospital treatment to a drunkard on the street shouting at buses, saying that in the NHS you can complain and no one listens, seemingly because they have judged it not to be a serious enough issue to warrant a response. He also said that the ombudsman is unlikely to do anything unless someone has died.
He recounted a situation a few years ago when he complained to the ombudsman after a hospital dismissed his issues about failings in his treatment for meningitis. The ombudsman did not have enough staff to investigate the issues he had raised, but did have enough funding to pay a marketing company to call him to ask about his experience reporting an issue to the ombudsman.
Call for a new forum
Fisk said that more than three years later, the situation is likely even worse as budgets are stripped away, so ombudsman staff can only deal with the most serious issues. He said he spends his life battling to improve the system and fighting to get appointments on the days he was promised.
He suggested that Health Secretary Yvette Cooper needs to establish another place for patients to complain about their treatment. The ombudsman could still exist to tackle the most serious cases, like an A&E, but a new forum could be for patients like him who have genuine concerns about how a hospital is run and are hitting computer-says-no brick walls. This would hopefully mean that these genuine concerns are addressed before they become critical issues, and so improve the NHS for everyone.
