Decision Report 201507874

Summary

Mrs C complained on behalf of her husband (Mr A) that the audiology department at the Victoria Hospital had unreasonably cancelled an appointment. Mrs C was also concerned that her husband did not have an appropriate hearing aid for his needs.

We took independent advice from a consultant clinical scientist in audiology. Regarding Mrs C's first complaint, the adviser was not critical of the board's cancellation of the appointment and noted that another, longer appointment had been arranged in its place. While we did not uphold Mrs C's complaint, we found evidence that Mr A and Mrs C had not been advised of the cancellation and so they had expected to attend two appointments. The adviser considered that the failure to advise them of the cancellation was not reasonable and therefore we made a recommendation.

Regarding Mrs C's second complaint, the adviser confirmed that Mr C had been given the appropriate hearing aid for his needs.

Recommendations

We recommended that the board:

• feed back the findings of this investigation to the staff in the audiology department; and
• apologise to Mr A for not informing him at the appropriate time that his appointment had been cancelled.