"Appalling"

My elderly physically disabled mother has been to A&E 3 times over the last 3 weeks. On 2nd March she attended via an out of hours doctors referral at 10:15pm, DVT was diagnosed and she was discharged at 3:30am and asked to return for further tests at 9am. Treatment was started on 3rd and she underwent 2 full days of testing. On the evening of 4th after waiting several hours she was told the test results would not be available that day so she was best to go home. On 7th March she felt breathless and called the out of hours doctor who attended her at home and advised everything was ok. On 13th she felt very poorly around 3pm and called 111 who advised to call an ambulance in case the DVT's had moved to her lungs and that she had developed pneumonia. She was admitted to the clinical decisions unit in the early hours on Monday morning with an intravenous antibiotic for the pneumonia. She stayed on the CDU having been told there were no female beds on a more suitable ward until Thursday 17th when she was taken off the intravenous antibiotic and discharged, unable to walk more than a few steps - in response to her request for a Care Needs Assessment she was told it would be quicker to access this service once she had been discharged. She also told them she didn't think she felt fully ready to be discharged. No thought was given to getting her home and no offer of hospital transport made. It was quite clear that the CDU needed to free up the bed. My sister and I cared for her at home on 18th but on 19th her condition rapidly declined and an ambulance was called and again, less than 48hrs after her discharge, she went to A&E and was again diagnosed with more severe pneumonia. She is now on a more suitable ward and breathing with oxygen.

Quite frankly she should not have

A) been held on the clinical decisions unit for 4 days

B) been discharged on 17th

C) been sent home without a care needs assessment

D) been required to travel home without the offer of a ambulance

This case needs to be investigated as it seems to me that there have been a number of failings.