Health’s red tape ‘threatening patient care’

Friday 05 October 2018

"Red tape" and a blind adherence to policy are threatening the care given to patients, an islander with severe pain issues has warned, amid a two-year dispute over securing treatment.

Mrs X’s* comments came during a States Complaints Board hearing yesterday in which hospital officials made a last-minute apology and offered to find a solution, despite having allegedly ignored her concerns up until that point.

Following an operation some years ago, the mother was left with severe pain in her upper body and a need to take strong painkillers. The Health Department arranged for her to attend a four-week pain management course in the UK, but problems arose because it would involve her being away for 27 days rather than 28 – the minimum amount of days for her to be entitled to funding for flights. 

Despite telling the department that she couldn’t be away for five weeks without seeing her children, the department declined to budge on their policy. She told the Complaints Board it meant that, were she to go, she would be left on her own in accommodation without internet access or a TV for nearly a month. 

“It sounds trivial, but when you are going to be away for four weeks it’s not. I thought, ‘I really can’t be on my own - literally on my own - no family members, no anything, for 27 days.’”

Pictured: Mrs X said that Health refused to pay for flights to allow her to see her children at the weekends.

Even up to 10 days before the course was due to start, she was still “desperately” trying to arrange a solution, but said it “got to a stage where they weren’t answering the phone or phone messages.”

In the end, she missed the course. 

After filing a complaint against the doctor who referred her to the UK, as well as a subsequent one over the way her complaint was handled, Mrs X asked the hospital if they would fund treatment in Jersey. The doctor replied that he couldn’t make a decision and would come back to her, but Mrs X said he never did. 

Two years later, during a Complaints Board hearing on the matter yesterday, Acting Group Medical Director John McInerney apologised for how Mrs X had been treated.

Pictured: John McInerney promised to submit a proposal within two weeks.

“The experience you have had was substandard and unacceptable,” he said, adding that he would make sure it never happens again. He also admitted that at some stages communication with Mrs X could have been better, but said that changes had since been made to improve communications with patients. 

Attempting to justify the department’s approach, he explained that funding rules are very strict. However, he was challenged by Complaints Board panel member David Greenwood, who suggested that the department had “strangely stuck to its policy” even at the expense of the customer.

Panel Chair Geoffrey Crill asked why the Health Department had not relaxed their policy when Mrs X was first made aware she would have to go to the UK. Mr McInerney replied: “Then it would mean we don’t have a policy.”

Pictured: Mrs X said she is not the only trying to get through daily life while being "tied up in red tape with her head against a brick wall."

When the Panel asked him if the policy was fit for purpose, Dr McInerney said: “This is a binding question, no policy is fit for purpose,” adding later on, “I didn’t know you wanted me to come here today to rewrite the policy.”

Mr McInerney then offered to go back to his colleagues to ask if funding the treatment as well as eight flights, or providing Mrs X with money for local treatment, might be possible.

Mrs X questioned, “Why did I have to wait two years for this?” to which Mr McInerney responded, “I don’t know.”

She added that she was exhausted after her two-year wait for treatment, hitting out at how her ordeal was handled: “There was no joined up approach, no particular patient focus at all, this rambled on continuously… It doesn’t matter whether you create a new policy when you had one and you never stuck to it… What comeback does the patient have when the policy is breached?”

Pictured: Mrs X said that patients, not policies, need to be the focus of attention among Health staff.

Mrs X continued: “Fundamentally there is a patient behind this that is not being the focus of attention. It’s not just myself, and I am not speaking for other patients, but there must be other people that are still trying to get through their daily life and who are tied up in red tape with their head against a brick wall, all the while trying to hold their life together for their children, the people they look after.”

Mr McInerney once again apologised on behalf of his department, pledging to do his best to find a “solution” within two weeks. “If I can’t succeed maybe I should step down,” he said. 

The States Complaints Board said they will wait for the proposal to be made before making their official findings in a report.

*Name changed to protect anonymity.