A patient repeatedly went to their GP in the Western Isles about hip pain to later discover it was cancer.
The patient, from the Western Isles, was the victim of a catalogue of errors made by a medical practice including misreporting an x-ray as “normal”.
Now the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) has ordered the medical practice in the NHS Western Isles to apologise to the patient, and told staff in future they must carry out blood tests when patients present with worsening bone pain.
A report into a complaint, published today, refers to the patient as “C”.
Western Isles cancer patient had ‘delayed diagnosis’
The report said: “C complained that the practice failed to properly investigate their hip pain symptoms, resulting in a delayed cancer diagnosis.
“C raised concerns that questions were not asked, or tests carried out, that might have led to an earlier diagnosis.”
The medical practice said it had noted that a muscular injury was suspected at the initial consultation.
It then transpired, at the time of the second consultation, an x-ray had been incorrectly reported as normal by the hospital.
The SPSO report continued: “We took independent medical advice from a GP.
“We found the practice’s management of C reasonable at the initial presentation.
“However, when C re-presented a month later with worsening bone pain despite a normal x-ray, further investigation, blood tests, should have been carried out.”
It wasn’t until a month later, following a review, that C was finally diagnosed.
An SPSO spokeswoman said: “We upheld C’s complaint. However, given the extensive nature of the disease identified, we did not consider that further investigation by the practice at the second consultation would have altered the overall outcome.
Declined to comment
” We asked the organisation to apologise to C for failing to carry out further investigations when they re-presented with ongoing and worsening pain. ”
Adding: “Blood tests should be considered when patients present with worsening bone pain.”
As this was an un-named medical practice in the Western Isles, we were unable to ask for a comment. NHS Western Isles declined to comment as it was a complaint about a medical practice.
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