£1,200 Bill From Care Home Whose ‘Neglect’ Led To Grandmother’s Death

The family of a grandmother who fell and died after being left unattended at a nursing home was furious after being sent a £1,200 bill for her care. Dementia sufferer Olive Hitchings, 85, tumbled from her wheelchair and broke her leg just ten days after moving into the nursing home.

{mosimage}Riversway Nursing Home in Bristol was accused of ‘nelgect’ by council investigators and her family say she should not have been left alone and should have been belted into her chair to stop her standing up.

Her outraged son Anthony, 59, said he was disgusted the home is charging them, despite being at fault. Anthony, from Kingswood, Bristol, said: “They’ll get the money over my dead body. “It’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow because if this accident hadn’t taken place, my mother would probably still be alive today.

“I’m not going to phone and ask them to waive the payment – people need to know what happened at the home. I shouldn’t have to ring them because they neglected my mother. It’s not about the fact of having the money, because that is available to us.”

Olive, a former cleaner and bookmakers’ employee, moved to the home in early April following an 11-week spell in Frenchay Hospital in Bristol. Her family say she lost had her mobility and was forced to use a wheelchair.

She suffered the fall ten days later and was taken back to Frenchay Hospital, where she died two days later. The 66-bed nursing home was warned to make improvements to its practices after a meeting held to investigate the complaints. The meeting was attended by Riversway manager Angela Glover; Jill Cornelius, an inspector for the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) and Kate Spreadbury, Bristol City Council’s safeguarding adults co-ordinator.

In a letter outlining her finding, Ms Spreadbury said: “Riversway did neglect Mrs Hitchings in failing to record her true mobility and in failing to assess the risks posed to Mrs Hitchings or to plan how these risks could be managed.”

Management was told to improve the way it assesses risks posed to residents to avoid a repeat of the accident. The measures the home has taken in light of the accident will be reviewed in an unannounced inspection by CSCI and further action will be taken if improvements are not made.

Mr Hitchings said he is wracked with guilt for choosing the care home where his mother died. “In one way I feel vindicated by the report because we knew there was a problem,” he said. “But in another way we feel mass grief because we chose the nursing home for her.”

Mary Rackham, operations director at Riversway, said the home had not yet received a copy of the investigation findings. She said the home was happy to meet the family to discuss any concerns. Ms Rackham, who said complaints against the home were extremely rare, explained that waiving the fees could be seen as an admission of guilt from the home’s staff.

She said: “If the family comes to us we will do our best to come to some mutually satisfactory solution and can record our sadness. Families do feel upset and guilty when these things happen, but it is very unusual. We are surprised by the findings of the investigation.”

Sharon Ward, spokeswoman for CSCI, said: “The council carried out this investigation and has fed back to the commission. We will follow up on any recommendations.”