A major NHS trust has been severely criticised by an official watchdog following the death of a woman who waited nearly three months to begin cancer treatment.
‘Delay after delay’ in fatal cancer case
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) investigated the care of a 67-year-old retired history teacher from Chelmsford, referred to as Mrs S. She first visited her GP in January 2023 suffering from uncomfortable abdominal bloating. Tragically, she died just three months later from terminal ovarian cancer.
Her son, who was 29 at the time of her death, raised serious concerns with the PHSO about her treatment at Broomfield Hospital, run by the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust. The investigation uncovered a significant delay in both diagnosing and treating her cancer.
"I had trust in the NHS, so whenever they told us things, like scans, would happen, we believed them. But it was just delay after delay," Mrs S's son said. He described the situation as "confusing and frustrating," adding that repeated requests for updates yielded little progress.
Missed targets and ‘avoidable distress’
The ombudsman's report detailed a timeline of failures. A CT scan on 16 February indicated cancer, but a diagnosis of ovarian cancer was not confirmed until 21 March, following a biopsy. While national NHS targets stipulate treatment should begin within 62 days of an urgent referral, Mrs S waited 81 days for her treatment to start.
She was informed her cancer was not survivable, but that chemotherapy might extend her life. However, due to the delays, her chemotherapy was scheduled for 21 April. By that date, Mrs S was too unwell to receive it. The watchdog concluded that had the trust met the national standard, her palliative care should have begun by 3 April, when she would still have been fit for treatment.
The report also highlighted that Mrs S was unsafely discharged from hospital and readmitted in a serious condition just three days later, dying the following day. Her son recounted being "handed a bag of medication with no instructions, advice or support."
Further failings included a lack of coordination between the hospital and a hospice for her palliative care, and delays in draining painful fluid from her abdomen, which caused "avoidable distress."
Systemic failures and trust-wide waiting times
At the time of Mrs S's treatment, the trust was failing to meet all NHS England cancer wait time targets. Performance was stark: only 47.6% of patients were treated within the 62-day target, against a national goal of 85%. By July 2025, this figure had deteriorated further to 46.1%.
Trust data reveals the scale of the ongoing issue: at the end of August 2025, 664 patients were waiting longer than 62 days either to confirm a cancer diagnosis or to begin treatment after a diagnosis.
Following its investigation, the PHSO has mandated the trust to review its performance against national cancer targets and create a robust action plan to meet them. The trust has committed to this and is examining how to better allocate resources and increase capacity.
Dawn Scrafield, chief executive of Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, offered a sincere apology to Mrs S's family. "Demand has increased, and we are reviewing how we manage the need for more diagnostic services," she stated. "We have begun an integrated improvement plan... to speed up treatment times and get patients to the right place at the right time."
