Ombudsman launches annual report
More than 3,500 complaints about public services were made to the Ombudsman last year. It marks an 11 per cent increase on the previous year's total, but Peter Tyndall says that's mainly down to the addition of 200 more public bodies to his jurisdiction in 2014. Launching his annual report, Mr Tyndall cited a number of complaints resolved by his office, including one from a woman who was wrongly contacted by Beaumont Hospital in Dublin about having a lumbar puncture. The woman queried the information, so the hospital checked its files and found the correct patient shared her name and year of birth. Beaumont has now changed procedures to ensure three points of identification are carried out before medical procedures go ahead.
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