Bungling NHS admits taking EIGHT HOURS to help dying great-grandmother who could have survived
Staff were not trained to use their new IT system on the day she died, an inquest heard
AN NHS out-of-hours service has come under fire after a catalogue of errors meant a doctor did not turn up until eight hours after a woman died.
Great-grandmother Myra Collins, 76, was having difficulty breathing and had been vomiting when her worried son Glenn, 48, called Partnering Health Limited (PHL), which runs the Hampshire doctors on-call service.
Operators on the 111 non-emergency helpline told her son that a doctor would be dispatched and arrive at her home, in Landport, Portsmouth, 'within six hours'.
But a catalogue of delays, IT system failures and blunders by call handlers meant a doctor did not turn up until the next day – eight hours after she died.
At the inquest into the diabetic grandmother's death, PHL's deputy medical director Dr Mike Johns revealed a damning series of slip-ups on the day.
Dr Johns told Portsmouth Coroner's Court, that the IT system at PHL's base at Cowplain Centre, Cowplain, had been given a major overhaul but said none of the staff had been trained to use it.
As controllers battled to understand the new system, a backlog of calls built up, causing delays to spiral.
He said: "It was a complete disaster."
Other errors included a shortage of on-call doctors to cover the county, and batteries on new mobile computer tablets kept failing, forcing doctors to return to the base to charge the devices.
The review also found call-handlers 'completed an unsafe act' and failed to properly assess Mrs Collins' most serious symptom while doctors lost keys to their cars, adding to delays.
A lack of communication from dispatchers to doctors was also revealed in the report.
Pathologist Dr Adrian Al-Badri said Mrs Collins had a range of ailments, including a weakened heart and kidneys, and if she had been taken to hospital earlier, her chances of survival would have increased.
She died of cardiac arrest and was found by her son at 2.07am on December 6 after he called 111 on December 5 last year.
She was pronounced dead by paramedics at 2.13am.
Portsmouth and south-east Hampshire coroner David Horsley recorded Mrs Collins' cause of death from natural causes due to a heart defect.
He added: "December 5 was pretty much a disastrous day for the out-of-hours service. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong."
Dr Johns said PHL, which serves 1.7m people in Hampshire, had made changes to avoid future disasters.
He said: "There's no getting away from the fact we were hours and hours late and we're extremely sorry for that."
Beverley, 45, said she would never forgive care firm Partnering Health Limited for the blunders.
"No matter how much they apologise it will never bring my mum back. What happened is absolutely disgusting. They (PHL) say they've improved but that's never going to bring our mum back. Our lives have been ruined."
Beverley added: "She was a funny mum with a devious sense of humour. We loved her all so much."
Mrs Collins leaves behind two great-grandchildren, eight grandchildren and four children.
Penny Mordaunt, Portsmouth North MP, said: "While what has been described is a perfect storm of errors and faulty IT, what this also points to is management failure where so many new and untested systems were in operation at the same time."
Portsmouth South MP Flick Drummond said: "I know that the CCG have had concerns for some time about PHL according to their board minutes."
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