Patient 'forced to go private'

A WOMAN and her mother were forced to spend £31,000 on life-saving treatment after a funding dispute with Plymouth Teaching Primary Care Trust.

The daughter, known only as Miss S, was an in-patient in the city from October 2006, suffering from depression and anorexia while away from her home in South Wales.

But a debate over which NHS body should fund her treatment led to her fearing she was "being left to die" and, by January 2007, her health had deteriorated so much her mother sought private care.

A joint report by the Health Service Ombudsman for England and the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales found maladministration and services failure by Plymouth Teaching PCT, as well as Health Commission Wales (HCW) and Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust. It said the failures resulted in "unremedied injustice and hardship" for the pair and recommended they be fully reimbursed.

The report described how Plymouth Teaching PCT asked a consultant psychiatrist in Wales to take over her care, which he declined to do. She was then referred to the local specialist NHS eating disorders unit, which unsuccessfully applied to HCW for funding.

Mrs S decided to pay to admit her daughter to a private eating disorders centre and complained to the ombudsmen, saying she was too ill to travel to Wales for assessment.

Miss S told the investigation she had lived in "constant terror" of what was going to happen to her while "bureaucrats continued to decide what, if anything, my life was worth".

Liz Cooney, director of professional practice for Plymouth Teaching PCT, added her apologies. "We recognise that, at the time, we did not have a system in place to ensure that delays in funding by other health bodies would not delay treatment for visitors," she said. "We now have a robust system embedded in our organisation's processes to ensure this does not happen again."