A healthcare charity has accused Noble’s bosses of a ’catastrophic administrative failure in patient care’ over delays to follow-up colonoscopy appointments.

The island’s Health and Care Association claims some bowel patients were forgotten about and reminders were ignored.

Delays to follow-up colonoscopy appointments were the subject of a review last year ordered by hospital director Mike Quinn which revealed 157 patients had potentially been affected.

But the Department of Health and Social Care indicated there were ’no adverse consequences as a result of this delay’ and that the backlog was addressed.

However, the Health and Care Association, a registered charity that supports patients who have initiated complaints about their care, said that behind those assurances, there has been an ’enormous failure of care’ which has not yet been admitted by the DHSC.

The association became involved following a complaint made by the family of a patient who had been waiting since 2014 for a follow-up colonoscopy. Despite repeated requests from his doctors, he had still not had one when he died in 2017. The HACA has since discovered that other bowel patients may have been waiting years for a follow-up appointment.

In a statement it said: ’There was a complete failure to carry out follow-up endoscopy from as far back as 2011.

’There were, then, an undisclosed number of patients, already identified as having a bowel problem that required investigation, throughout this time period. Some of these may have died due to undiagnosed bowel disease.’

The charity said there may be others who were diagnosed by other means and treated but not recorded as needing follow-up by 2017.

It added: ’The scale of this failure may never be properly ascertained because, if an accurate diagnosis of, say, bowel cancer was not confirmed (by colonoscopy), it would not be recorded on a death certificate.

’It seems that these people were not given any priority over routine surveillance cases, and, were, in fact, forgotten about.

’Even worse, there is some evidence that requests and reminders addressed to the appropriate departments by patients and their medical advisors were ignored.’

Following last year’s review that found 157 people were overdue for follow-up colonoscopy appointments, steps were taken to address the issue. It was anticipated to clear the backlog by September of that year.

But the IoMHACA said: ’Whilst the syyteps taken by our hospital director, soon after his appointment, are to be applauded, there needs to be a recognition of the underlying cause, extent and consequences of this catastrophic administrative failure in patient care, by the Department of Health.’

endoscopy

When quizzed by a Tynwald scrutiny committee reporting into the consolidation of endoscopy services at Noble’s, DHSC chief executive, Dr Malcolm Couch, admitted: ’Because we have not been looking after them properly we have a pretty big problem.’

However the report went on to praise the DHSC and its staff for its efforts to address the situation, saying: ’We conclude that the changes made in 2017 to the organisation of the endoscopy service appear to have had some success in clearing the backlog and increasing capacity. The Department of Health and Social Care must continue to monitor the performance of the endoscopy service to ensure that the improvements to efficiency planned for in 2017 are realised and sustained.’

The report also called on the department to report back to Tynwald by May 2018 on the underlying reasons for the failures to arrange follow-up endoscopies.

So far this further report to Tynwald has not yet been made public and Onchan MHK Julie Edge will ask at the next sitting of the House of Keys why it is taking so long for its findings to be released.