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A troubled NHS trust has apologised to the family of a man who died after a series of potentially fatal delays to treat a tumour, in a case that is being investigated by police as possible corporate manslaughter.
Richard Harris, 71, died last July after a series of errors in the neurosurgery department at the Royal Sussex County hospital in Brighton, which is part of University Hospitals Sussex NHS foundation trust (UHSussex).
The trust admitted that Harris was “lost to follow-up” when the hospital repeatedly failed to monitor a tumour in his nervous system, or operate on it, as doctors recommended.
An internal review of Harris’s care found that doctors failed to arrange a routine MRI scan for him when he was first urgently referred to neurosurgery in 2017. Harris, who was fit and a regular swimmer, only received a scan when he contacted the department again in 2019.
The scan picked up a benign schwannoma tumour, which a multidisciplinary team concluded would require regular monitoring, every six months. They also said “surgical intervention should be advised”, the review found.
But no surgery was arranged. And the required follow-up scans were postponed and cancelled at a time when internal whistleblowers expressed alarm about high cancellation rates, and repeated and allegedly dangerous failures to follow up patients under the trust’s care.
Eventually Harris, who had worked as a gardener, delivery driver and massage therapist, was referred to neurosurgery early last year suffering with acute pain. He had to wait weeks to be seen, despite repeatedly pleading with his consultant in emails complaining of “red-hot poker pain” that was “scaring me to death”. There were yet further delays in arranging MRI scans, the review found.
Months later, the tumour was assessed to be cancerous and inoperable. Harris was discharged to hospice care and died a few weeks later.
Sussex police have confirmed to Harris’s family that his death is being investigated as possible corporate manslaughter, as part of its expanding Operation Bramber investigation.
Police documents seen by the Guardian show that more than 90 deaths in the general surgery and neurosurgery departments are being reviewed as possible manslaughter. Detectives and a clinical panel are examining alleged medical negligence and cover-ups between 2015 and 2021. The allegations were first made by two internal whistleblowers: Krishna Singh, a consultant surgeon, and Mansoor Foroughi, a consultant neurosurgeon, who lost their jobs after raising concerns.
Police have explained to Harris’s family that his case has been included because, although he died outside the investigation’s timeframe, the errors that could have contributed to his death occurred earlier.
Before he died, the trust apologised to Harris for its failure to arrange follow-up scans as planned in 2019. Now the trust’s internal review has detailed what went wrong and the “missed opportunities” to correct repeated failures to monitor the tumour.
It found the trust had “systems and process that allowed patients needing active monitoring to be lost to follow-up if not corrected by the patients themselves”. It noted that Harris cancelled a scan in error in 2020, but further scans or appointments were not arranged by the hospital. It even failed to arrange a scan after Harris was picked up in routine review in 2022 and wrongly classified as not requiring monitoring.
Additionally, when Harris attended the hospital as an outpatient for three other complaints in 2022 and a physical assault in 2023, his need for a scan was not picked up.
The trust also apologised “unreservedly” to the family for the way Harris’s “humbling” emails about what he said was “unbearable pain” were ignored.
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Richard’s sister, Jane Harris, said the report on her brother’s death was “pathetic”. She said: “They seem to be expert at fobbing people off. The way they have treated us mirrors how Richard was treated. We are just so horrified by how Richard’s life was cut short.”
She added: “Richard slipped through the net time and time again. It is the whole system there that is the problem. The more you read about his case, the more delays you see.”
Months before the trust sacked him in December 2021, Foroughi complained about high cancellation rates in the hospital and how failure to follow up with a number of individual patients led to deaths and serious harm.
A dossier setting out his concerns said: “Delays and cancellations of hundreds of operations and OPD [outpatient department] appointments each year has been stressful, demoralising and beyond measure in terms of costs to the patients and their families.”
Katie Urch, the chief medical officer for UHSussex, said: “Our heartfelt sympathies and apologies go to Richard Harris’s family. We have conveyed this to them previously, but hope to do so in person in the coming weeks.
“We know that they understandably still have many questions about Mr Harris’s care.
“Regrettably, we cannot publicly discuss any of the details of this case at this time, but we will sincerely attempt to address any issues the family raise with us.”
