Failure to Arrange Follow-Up Care Claims

Has Your Doctor Failed to Arrange Your Follow-Up Care?

After receiving treatment or being discharged from hospital, you trust your healthcare team to explain what happens next. You may have been told that you needed a follow-up appointment, further monitoring, additional treatment or another medical assessment.

When that follow-up care is not arranged, you can be left feeling forgotten and unsure about what you are supposed to do next. If your symptoms continue or your condition gets worse, you may later discover that you should have received further care sooner.

You may be left wondering why nobody contacted you, whether your condition could have been identified earlier and whether things might have been different if you had received the follow-up care you needed.

If your GP, hospital or another healthcare professional failed to arrange appropriate follow-up care and this caused you avoidable harm, you may be entitled to make a medical negligence claim.

You may have grounds to investigate a claim if follow-up care should have been arranged, the care you received fell below an appropriate standard and the delay caused you avoidable injury or made your condition worse. Whether these requirements are met will depend on the evidence and your individual circumstances.

At Macks Solicitors, we understand how difficult it can be to discover that you may not have received the care you were supposed to receive. Our specialist medical negligence solicitors will listen to what happened, explain your legal options clearly and support you throughout the claims process.

Free Initial Discussion

For no-obligation advice and information, call our specialist medical negligence solicitors today on 01642 843 667 or use our contact form and we will call you back.

What Does Failure to Arrange Follow-Up Care Mean?

Follow-up care is the medical care provided after an initial consultation, treatment, procedure, operation or hospital admission.

Depending on your circumstances, you may need:

• A follow-up appointment with your GP or hospital consultant
• Monitoring after treatment or surgery
• Further medical tests
• A review of your symptoms or recovery
• Medication reviews
• Wound checks
• Further treatment or rehabilitation
• Follow-up with another healthcare professional

Your healthcare team should make appropriate arrangements for any follow-up care that is medically necessary.

A failure to arrange this care does not automatically mean that medical negligence has occurred. The circumstances of your treatment and the care you should reasonably have received will need to be considered.

When Should Follow-Up Care Be Arranged?

The type and timing of follow-up care will depend on your individual circumstances. Follow-up may be appropriate after:

• Surgery or another medical procedure
• Treatment for an injury or illness
• Being discharged from hospital
• Treatment in A&E
• Starting a new medication
• A serious diagnosis
• An ongoing medical condition
• Treatment where your recovery needs to be monitored

For some patients, follow-up may be arranged before they leave hospital. In other situations, your GP or another healthcare professional may need to make the necessary arrangements.

If appropriate follow-up care was needed but was not arranged, this may result in a condition being missed or treatment being delayed.

Can Failure To Arrange Follow-Up Care Be Medical Negligence?

It can be, depending on what happened and whether the failure caused you harm.

Not every missed appointment or failure to arrange follow-up care will amount to medical negligence. To make a successful claim, it will generally be necessary to establish that the care you received fell below an appropriate standard and that this caused you injury or made your condition worse.

For example, you may have undergone treatment and should have been reviewed afterwards, but no follow-up appointment was arranged. If a problem that should have been identified during that review was left untreated and this caused you additional harm, you may have grounds for a claim.

Our medical negligence solicitors can review your medical records and obtain independent medical evidence where necessary to understand what follow-up care should have been provided.

What Can Happen If Follow-Up Care Is Not Arranged?

The consequences will depend on your medical condition and the type of follow-up you needed. A failure to arrange appropriate follow-up care can sometimes lead to:

• A condition going undiagnosed
• A complication being missed
• Treatment being delayed
• Symptoms becoming worse
• An infection or other complication becoming more serious
• A longer recovery period
• The need for more extensive treatment
• Additional pain and suffering
• Long-term or permanent injury

In some circumstances, appropriate follow-up could have identified a problem at an earlier stage and allowed treatment to be provided sooner.

If you believe you should have received follow-up care that was not arranged, our specialist medical negligence solicitors can help you understand your options. Call us today on 01642 843 667 or use our contact form and we will call you back.

Can a Hospital Fail to Arrange Follow-Up Care?

Yes. Hospitals have a responsibility to make appropriate arrangements for patients who need ongoing care following treatment or discharge. A problem may arise if, for example:

• You are discharged without an appropriate follow-up appointment
• A planned review is not arranged
• You are not given the follow-up care you were told you would receive
• A complication is not monitored
• Information about your ongoing care is not properly communicated
• You are discharged without appropriate instructions about what should happen next

If this results in avoidable harm, it may be appropriate to investigate whether the standard of care you received was adequate.

Can a GP Fail to Arrange Follow-Up Care?

GPs may also be responsible for arranging or providing follow-up care. For example, your GP may need to review you after starting treatment, monitor an ongoing condition or arrange further care following treatment elsewhere. A potential failure could involve:

• Not arranging a review when one was needed
• Failing to monitor your condition appropriately
• Not checking whether treatment has worked
• Failing to review you after a significant change in your symptoms
• Not arranging appropriate ongoing care
• Failing to act when your condition has not improved

Whether this amounts to medical negligence will depend on the individual circumstances and the harm caused.

What If I Was Told Someone Would Contact Me, But Nobody Did?

Being told that a hospital, GP surgery or another healthcare professional would contact you can understandably leave you expecting that someone is dealing with your ongoing care.

If nobody contacts you and you are later diagnosed with a condition that should have been identified or treated sooner, you may have concerns about what happened.

Your medical records may help establish what follow-up was recommended, who was responsible for arranging it and whether the necessary arrangements were actually made.

It can also be important to consider what happened during the period when you were waiting for follow-up and whether the delay caused you additional harm.

What If I Was Discharged From Hospital Without Proper Follow-Up Care?

Being discharged from hospital can be a worrying time, particularly if you are still experiencing symptoms or recovering from treatment.

You should generally be given appropriate information about your ongoing care, including any follow-up that is needed.

If you were discharged without arrangements being made for necessary follow-up care, or you were not given appropriate information about what should happen next, this may be relevant when investigating a potential medical negligence claim.

For example, you may have needed a review after surgery, but no appointment was arranged. If a complication then developed and was only discovered when you sought medical help yourself, it may be important to establish whether earlier follow-up would have identified the problem.

If you are concerned about missing follow-up care, keep any appointment letters, discharge documents, messages and notes of telephone calls. It may also help to record when your symptoms changed, when you contacted your GP or hospital and when you eventually received further assessment or treatment. These materials can help your solicitor understand the sequence of events alongside your medical records.

What Evidence Is Needed For a Failure to Arrange Follow-Up Care Claim?

Y our medical records are likely to be an important part of investigating your claim. They may help establish:

• What treatment or procedure you received
• What follow-up care was recommended
• Whether an appointment or review was supposed to be arranged
• What information you were given when you were discharged
• Whether you contacted your GP or hospital about ongoing symptoms
• When you eventually received further care
• What was found during that later assessment
• Whether the delay affected your condition or treatment

Other evidence may also be relevant, including appointment letters, discharge information, correspondence, medication records and details of any additional treatment you needed.

Independent medical evidence may be required to establish whether the follow-up care should have been provided and whether receiving it sooner would have made a difference.

Can I Claim Compensation For Failure To Arrange Follow-Up Care?

You may be able to claim compensation if a healthcare professional failed to arrange appropriate follow-up care and this caused you avoidable injury or harm.

Compensation may reflect the impact that the negligence has had on your life, including:

• Pain and suffering
• Additional medical treatment
• Rehabilitation costs
• Care and assistance
• Travel expenses
• Loss of earnings
• Future financial losses
• The impact of your injury on your everyday life

Every claim is different, and the amount of compensation will depend on the nature and severity of the harm you have suffered.

How Long Do I Have To Make a Medical Negligence Claim?

In most medical negligence claims, you generally have three years to begin legal proceedings.

The three-year period will usually run from the date the negligence occurred. If you did not know at that time that your injury may have been caused by medical negligence, it will usually run from the date you became aware, or should reasonably have become aware, of that possibility.

There are exceptions to the usual time limits, including claims involving children and people who lack mental capacity.

Because the applicable deadline can depend on the facts, it is sensible to seek legal advice as soon as possible rather than waiting until the end of the three-year period.

Why Choose Macks Solicitors?

Discovering that follow-up care may not have been arranged when it should have been can leave you with difficult questions about what happened to your health and why nobody noticed sooner.

At Macks Solicitors, our specialist medical negligence solicitors understand that making a claim is about more than what is written in your medical records. It is about understanding what happened to you and the impact it has had on your life.

We will take the time to listen to your experience, explain the legal process in straightforward language and help you understand whether you may have a claim.

If we believe there are grounds to investigate your case further, we can support you through the claims process and work to establish what happened and whether the care you received caused you avoidable harm.

Contact Us

If you believe you were left without the follow-up care you needed, you do not have to work out what happened on your own.

Call our specialist medical negligence solicitors today on 01642 843 667; alternatively, complete our online contact form and one of our solicitors will be in touch.