Sound Familiar?

I've not posted for AGES but just been talking to wifey who was telling me about another death at Lincoln County Hospital.... death by sepsis due to gallbladder complications.

Having a quick Google I found yet ANOTHER story...

From Stamford Mercury....link

Criticism of communication between Grantham and Lincoln hospitals during inquest into death

An inquest into the death of a man from Corby Glen raised concerns over communication between Lincolnshire hospitals, as an urgent procedure was cancelled when the patient received two appointments on the same date.

On March 22, Robert Hall, of Pridmore Road, died at Lincoln County Hospital from septicaemia, as a consequence of cholangitis caused by gallstones in the common bile duct. Also identified as a contributing factor was a perforated duodenal diverticulum – the first part of the small intestine.

A procedure to remove the gallstones, known as an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, or ERCP, was attempted three days before Mr Hall’s death, but had originally been scheduled at Lincoln for three weeks earlier, only to be cancelled because he was due to see his treating consultant at Grantham on the same day.

Coroner Paul Smith said: “It does seem there was something of a hiatus in the communication between the various hospital departments and Mr Hall’s family, which led to two letters being sent to them only a couple of days apart with competing and clashing requirements to attend either Lincoln or Grantham Hospital on February 26.”

Giving evidence during the inquest, Mr Hall’s daughter Stephanie Tuohy said: “I rang Lincoln County Hospital on February 16 to explain that we didn’t know what the procedure was and that we hadn’t seen the consultant to explain anything. They readily cancelled the appointment even though it was supposedly marked as urgent.”

She then accompanied her 81-year-old father to his Grantham Hospital appointment, only to be told he should have had the ERCP. “He asked if he’d had the procedure and we said no. He asked why and he was absolutely horrified.

“He was actually quite rude,” she told the coroner. “It concluded with him saying that we were wasting his time and we were not to go back to see him until we’d been to Lincoln for the ERCP.”

It was not the only delay experienced by Mr Hall and his family. An incomplete form had already put back the initial MRI scan identifying the presence of gall stones, and when this led to the decision on January 29 to do an ERCP, a letter stating this was received by Mr Hall’s GP but not by the patient. The first time Mr Hall heard about it was when he received the competing appointments for February 26.
The next day, Mr Hall was admitted to Lincoln County Hospital with severe abdominal pain, and the perforated duodenal diverticulum was identifed and operated on with success.
He returned home, only to be readmitted for on March 13 when it was identified that the gall stone problems predominated.
By the time the ERCP was undertaken on March 19, one gallstone was too large to be removed. The plan was to try again once Mr Hall’s body had recovered, but he deteriorated rapidly and died on March 22.
Returning a short narrative conclusion, coroner Smith said: “Robert Hall died from septicaemia, that being a recognised complication of an ERCP procedure attempted on March 19, 2015 to remove a gall stone from the common bile duct.
“At the time the procedure was undertaken Mr Hall was recovering from a successful procedure to repair a perforated duodenal diverticulum undertaken on February 27, 2015.
“It is not possible to say on balance of probabilities whether the outcome would have been different had the ERCP been performed prior to that operation.”

What's frightening about that, is colangitis....which is what I had earlier this year AND because doctors are too stupid to realise the symptoms or that this is happening- because when it happens, it happens fast- I'm now apparently more susceptible to this condition and so I now carry a scanned letter on my phone from my consultant explaining to any fuckwit medical person that I'm not being over dramatic and to take my condition seriously. Mental isn't it.
Like any medical condition, you begin looking and you find things you wish you hadn't!... classic example!

Surviving Critical Illness

There is now a little band of people muttering about Critical Illness Insurance (CII)

Why? Because they were critically ill and their insurers didn't pay out because they had the wrong type of illness.

Absolute bollocks I hear you cry! Couldn't agree more and I wrote a piece about it all in 2011- here's the link.

Anyway, things have begun to get interesting and we have started a Facebook group up in an attempt to find others who have fallen foul of this insurance 'scam'

If you know anyone this applies to, get them to join. We need as much support on this as we can get.

To this end and to STOP insurance companies making up their own definition of what actually constitutes "critical illness' we need NHS England and any other medical bodies and institutions to agree on a clinical definition.

In a recent meeting with Dr Ron Daniels, founder of Sepsis UK, we came up with the following:

Critical Illness is a non-specific, life-threatening illness which requires treatment in an Intensive or Critical Care Unit (ICU, ITU, CCU etc.). Critical Illness is defined by the severity of the illness not by the condition that causes it. Typically critically ill patients require advanced respiratory support and / or support for at least two organs. Critical Illness includes all complex patients requiring support for multi-organ failure.
This definition is in line with Level 3 care - Dept of Health 2000.
Time scale: this definition does not rely on a time scale. Diagnosis of Critical Illness and the provision of Critical Care may be applied at any stage of a patient’s illness and its duration is determined only by clinical guidelines.

Recovering from the mental and physical trauma of critical illness is tough. Survivors often feel confused, vulnerable and isolated; some are even diagnosed with PTSD as a direct result of their experience. This situation can be exacerbated by crippling financial shock. Many survivors are unable to work for an extended period and some find it impossible to return to a normal, full time career as before. It is to avoid these circumstances that critical illness cover is purchased.

Unfortunately CIC/CII is not what it claims to be and many critical illness survivors find they are not covered. Sepsis is the single biggest admission diagnosis to critical care in the UK and is second only (current research) to heart disease in cases. Sepsis (which from anecdotal evidence is a component of 70% of critical illnesses cases) along with UTI, pneumonia, asthma and nearly 400 other conditions we have found to date are not covered by this insurance. In other words CIC/CII covers less than 10% of the conditions that can make you critically ill.

There is no established clinical/medical definition of critical illness which allows commercial interests to define it for their own ends. We believe that a condition based definition is, at best inappropriate and misleading. There is no moral hazard with critical illness insurance, no one sets out to become critically ill and you can not chose what condition you get. This effectively means policy holders are paying for a very expensive lottery rather than the security and piece of mind as the insurance industry would have you believe. This makes it unfit for purpose and can be compared to PPI.