I acted as next of kin for a good friend of mine who had been diagnosed with a Class IV brain tumour. He collpased, was taken to A&E and discharged a few days later to a London Hospice with the diagnosis of 'days to live'. Two months later he was still alive though in extremely poor condition and the Hospice, along with the commissioning CCG, decided that he should be moved to long term care in a nursing home where he died a week later in truely appalling circumstances. I filed a complaint with the commissioining CCG in Oct 2015 and it is now April 2016 and still no response from the CCG other than to tell me that the nursing home staff involved with his paliative nursing have gone on either long term holiday or sick leave. That aside I have two issues, firstly how many patients have been summarily ejected from their hospices for not passing away within a requisite but unspecified amount of time given that a statement on the NHS Choices website which I quoted in my letter of complaint, stated 'Hospices provide care for people from the point at which their illness is diagnosed as terminal, to the end of their life, however long that may be' was removed from the NHS Choices webpage soon after I had made my complaint. Secondly, I know realise that I face the full force of NHS obfuscation and evasion as I try to get answers to my complaint. I would like to hear from those who have been through similar events as I am beginning to believe that I have stumbled into an issue that is never discussed on any of the other websites that I have looked at but is a real cause for concern and heartbreak for relatives. I do not want anyone to ever go through what happened to my friend and colleague, he did not deserve it and it is only with the help of people who have received similar treatment can this practice be stopped.
