Mother's death exposes on-call GP flaws

LONDON, May 25 (Reuters) A mother who died from organ failure caused by blood poisoning after eight doctors failed to spot the illness was let down by ''serious flaws'' in the out-of-hours GP service, a report said today.

Journalist Penny Campbell, 41, from London, developed septicaemia after a minor operation to treat haemorrhoids and died less than a week later.

In the four days before her death, the mother-of-one contacted her surgeon, spoke to six on-call GPs by telephone and saw two doctors in person.

None diagnosed her condition and she died in hospital the morning after she decided to go a hospital casualty department.

An inquiry into her death found a series of flaws in the system of after-hours healthcare.

The doctors had no easy access to each others' notes, making it harder for them to realise the gravity of the situation.

''Failure to ensure that notes were available was a major system failure and a direct factor leading to Penny Campbell's death,'' the inquiry concluded.

It criticised the doctors for simply telling Campbell to ring back if she did not feel better.

''As a system for safety netting this was seriously flawed, as each call was treated as an individual episode of care,'' the inquiry said.

The inquiry said six of the doctors provided her with a ''reasonable standard'' of care, but one did not adequately explore her symptoms to see if she was seriously ill. The role of the eighth cannot be assessed in retrospect.

Campbell's care was provided by a private company called Camidoc, which covers GPs across north London. The government handed control of the on-call system from GPs to primary care trusts in 2004.

Her partner Angus MacKinnon said the system was ''clearly failing'' and must be overhauled.

''The out-of-hours care was a shambles,'' he said. ''The agency was covering a million people in north London and it was completely unfit for that task.'' He plans to sue Camidoc and two or three of the doctors involved for clinical negligence.

The report called on Camidoc and local primary care trusts to review their on-call provision.

Islington Primary Care Trust Chief Executive Rachel Tyndall expressed her deepest regret and said lessons would be learned.

''We have already, and will continue, to do things differently as a result,'' she said in a statement.

Camidoc said in a statement: ''We accept and will deliver all of the recommendations, many of which we are already in the process of implementing.'' REUTERS SV BD1730