Decision Report 201606871

Summary

Ms C complained about the urological surgery care provided to her son (child A). At birth, child A was diagnosed with hypospadias (a condition where the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis). He also had severe chordee (where the penis is curved) and a right side hydrocele (accumulation of fluid in a body sac). He underwent a number of operations over several years to attempt to correct these issues. Ms C complained that her son was now in a worse condition that when the treatment began, and she felt that the multiple operations he had been through had not been done correctly.

We took independent advice from a paediatric urological surgeon. We found that the type of surgeries child A had undergone have a high rate of complication and that there was no evidence that the surgeries had not been carried out to a reasonable standard. However, we found that there was at one point a delay of over a year between child A being reviewed and him being listed for further surgery. We considered this delay in adding child A to the waiting list to be unreasonable. We upheld this aspect of Ms C's complaint.

Ms C also complained that the board had failed to provide a response to her complaint within a reasonable timescale. We found no evidence that the board had failed to follow their complaints procedure or that there had been an unreasonable delay, and therefore we did not uphold this aspect of Ms C's complaint.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Apologise to Ms C for failing to enter child A onto the waiting list for further surgery after his review. The apology should meet the standards set out in the SPSO guidelines on apology available at https://www.spso.org.uk/leaflets-and-guidance.

What we said should change to put things right in future:

• Robust mechanisms should be in place to ensure that patients are entered on the surgical waiting list in a timely manner.

We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.