A city worker has died of organ failure, after a hospital receptionist allegedly decided that she 'wasn't that sick', an inquest has heard.
The hearing was told that, it was the first of several decisions by staff at the hospital which ended in the death of Madhumita Mandal four days later.
The 30 year old, was taken to the Croydon hospital, after vomiting for more than four hours on Saturday 7 September morning in 2013.
The reception and the urgent care centre which deals with minor ailments are run by Virgin Care on behalf of the NHS.
But receptionist Triveni Dhavade, who is a qualified mortgage advisor with a pharmacist degree from India, allegedly referred her to the urgent care centre rather than the NHS casualty unit in the same building. Mrs Dhavade had worked as a receptionist at the hospital for 17 years.
She told the inquest: “I wasn’t to know that she was that sick.”
Mrs Mandal’s husband Prabhanjan Behera pleaded for a nurse to see to his wife, who repeatedly vomited in the waiting room, but the receptionist allegedly could not find one for more than an hour and told them they would just have to wait.
Eventually a nurse saw Mrs Mandal and realising how seriously ill she was rushed her to the NHS casualty resuscitation room.
Dr Jessica Davies, a junior doctor, who was in her second year of training since qualifying and had been at the hospital for a month, was the first doctor to see her.
The coroner asked her if she knew she was “out of her depth” and she admitted she was “very concerned”.
The inquest heard that Dr Ademola Tokan-Lawal, allegedly delayed calling in the medical team, insisting Mrs Mandal needed fluids for her heart rate to come down.
Madhumita died of sepsis and multi-organ failure four days later on September 11, 2013.
Mr Behera, 38 told the hearing on 23 September 2015: “I was asking for help many times saying ‘she is vomiting, it is getting worse. She was just said to wait.”
Mrs Mandal, who was popularly known as Maddie had previously had an operation to remove cysts at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in May 2012 and was due to have further surgery on September 9, 2013 after the cysts regrew.
“Losing Maddie has changed my life completely — I feel like I’ve lost everything and my world came crumbling down.
“I feel that there were a number of occasions that if doctors had intervened and treated her sooner, she would still be with me today.”
To add salt to the wound, her IT professional husband was forced to leave the country after her death and returned to India because the Home Office said there were no “compelling and compassionate reasons” for him to stay in the country further.
Recording a narrative verdict, coroner Dr Serena Lynch said: “For the prospect of survival, time was of the essence and minutes were wasted. But the evidence does not disclose that her death would have been prevented by earlier assessment.”
A spokesman for the Croydon Urgent Care Centre said: “Mrs Mandal was correctly streamed to the Urgent Care Centre (UCC) based upon the symptoms she presented with when she initially walked in.
"Unfortunately her condition deteriorated rapidly and, while our nurse who saw Mrs Mandal after 51 minutes in the UCC correctly escalated the situation to the emergency department, we are sorry to Mrs Mandal’s family for their distress during the wait to be seen.
“The reception-based streaming model specified for the UCC by NHS Croydon Clinical Commissioning Group, as the Coroner noted, has been recognised by the Department of Health and we work closely with our colleagues in the Emergency Department to ensure patients are seen in the most appropriate service as promptly as possible.”
