Doctor ran a London out-of-hours service from his home

An NHS report has disclosed that a doctor in charge of out-of-hours care for 1 million London patients actually operated the service from his home in Norfolk.

An investigation by NHS South West London discovered that the doctor was guilty of “a shocking series of failings” and whose actions have been described as “a major abuse of the National Health Service”.

Dr. Savi Sondhi was responsible for out-of-hours care for a large part of South West London through the independent company Croydoc.

The investigation revealed that the doctor repeatedly failed to answer his telephone when on call and took between 1½ and 3 hours to respond to urgent requests for help. The NHS target time for responding to urgent requests for help is 10 minutes.

The General Medical Council has suspended Dr. Sondhi, after discovering that as many as 114 calls were being logged to his telephone each evening. The investigation heard of one particular case, where a patient was kept waiting for 12 hours for treatment and then died as a result of the delay.

Linder Myers Solicitors has a specialist clinical and medical negligence team who have undertaken numerous successful claims for patients involved in the negligent provision of care by a General Practitioner.

For further information on the expertise of Linder Myers in dealing with the issue raised in this article please contact the Medical Negligence Team on 0844 984 6155/6.