Referring The Complaint To The Healthcare Commission.

The complaint was referred to the Healthcare Commission in April 2008, including supporting documents of some copies from Hari's notes. The complaint was assigned to Helen Wilson as a case manager.

During early May 2008, Helen and I had a lengthy telephone conversation. Helen was helpful and considerate throughout the call. We discussed the options available and as Helen was keen that the matter be quickly resolved, in order to facilitate diagnosis, she suggested that the complaint be referred back to the health trust for local resolution. Helen explained to me that she felt the health trust had not done enough to resolve our concerns and that they should be asked to do more. She also explained that, if local resolution was unsuccessful, the Healthcare Commission would be happy to take the case back on.

I was concerned that an attempt at local resolution would be unlikely to achieve anything and would simply serve as a delay, if nothing was achieved. However, whilst I didn't expect that the health trust would actually resolve all the issues immediately, I did hope that they might, at least, agree to investigate and diagnose Hari's undiagnosed problem. For this reason we agreed to Helen's proposal.

Helen contacted the health trust, although there was short delay as initially she sent the documents to the wrong trust and they had to be forwarded on to University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust.

We waited patiently for the trust to contact us.

As Hari is still being allowed to attend her physiotherapy sessions at the Children's Hospital, an assistant divisional manager, Michele Narey, came to the department during an appointment to speak to us regarding a proposed meeting. I stressed to her that we were keen for a diagnosis to be made.

Again we waited patiently.

Eventually we got fed up with waiting. The delays in every process were delaying the opportunities for diagnosis; so I telephoned Michele's office in order to ascertain when the proposed meeting might take place. A date was agreed and I was informed that those to be present at the meeting would be:

Michele Narey, Assistant Divisional Manager.
Geraldine Johnston, Divisional Manager.
Liz Crowne, Endocrine Consultant.
Anne Miller, Senior Nurse at the Children's Hospital.

We still didn't expect too much from the meeting but in order to try and resolve the issues, and organise investigations and diagnosis, we were keen that the meeting should go ahead.