I had a private health assessment through Bluecrest Wellness in September.
The results of my £199 check contained a blood pressure measurement, which was highlighted with a red flag and a comment that I was at an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
I thought I might have a stroke at any minute, so was shaking with shock for three hours until my daughter, a nurse, came to see me. She read the report and told me the result was impossible and that Bluecrest should have known this before sending it out to me.
The top figure, the systolic measurement, was 140, and the bottom, the diastolic, was 185. The bottom figure can never be higher than the top figure. Readings taken at my GP surgery earlier in 2024 recorded 130 over 72.
I expected a full refund because of the anxiety caused, but after going through the complaints process, I was offered only £50. Can you help?
D.M., Ipswich.
Panic: A reader was left thinking they could suffer a stroke at any moment due to a botched private healthcare check up
Sally Hamilton replies: If you’d tested your blood pressure on receipt of your scary results, I imagine it would likely have been through the roof.
Not a calming prescription for a woman of 80 with a family history of heart attacks. I can understand how an off-the-scale figure gave you such a fright.
Luckily, your daughter saw immediately there was a mistake and tried to reassure you. But I wondered why Bluecrest hadn’t spotted the error just as quickly and intervened before the paperwork was sent.
It wasn’t just the BP error that upset you. You were unhappy with the complaints process that followed – and the way the company, of which you have been a customer for more than a decade, went silent when you said you weren’t happy with the £50 payout.
On my intervention, Bluecrest investigated swiftly. It admitted the health assessment specialist had mistakenly entered an incorrect number in your report but said this was corrected within three days and you were updated.
However, it did confirm it had not responded to your last letter expressing discontent with the conclusion. This was because it considered your complaint closed and had informed you in that correspondence of your right to contact the Care Quality Commission should you be unhappy with the resolution.
As a result of your experience, Bluecrest confirms it will now track letters that arrive after a complaint has been closed. It tells me your experience has led it to make improvements to its data input procedures.
This includes making enhanced verification checks to stop results being submitted that fall outside expected and physiologically possible ranges, as happened with your BP readings.
It is also refunding you the £199 cost of your assessment, offered you a further check free of charge should you want it, and donated £50 to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a charity you support.
Openreach is bullying my 87-year-old mother
In April, my 87-year-old mother received a request from Openreach to consent to a ‘wayleave agreement’ relating to the installation of fibre network cables on a route across her property to supply another customer.
There was a lot of paperwork to review and she asked me to help. Three days after the first letter, she got a chasing letter saying it had heard nothing.
A week later, a third arrived, this time mildly threatening, and a week after that a fourth advising they would take the matter to a tribunal and bemoaning the ‘radio silence’ on her part.
My mother couldn’t sleep with worry. I want an apology for the bullying approach.
K.T., Norfolk.
Sally Hamilton replies: Openreach is behind most of the country’s phone and broadband infrastructure and is used by the likes of BT and Sky.
When it needs to install, maintain or repair equipment on private land or inside a property such as a block of flats, it will often need permission from those not benefiting from the service.
This comes in the form of wayleaves, which are written legal agreements. For individuals such as your mother, who have never come across these before, it can be bewildering. What might you be signing up to?
You were particularly aggrieved at the hectoring letters sent to your elderly mother and the lack of response as you tried to find out more from your sickbed.
You called the number printed on the correspondence several times and only ever got an answer machine on which you left messages outlining the situation. You emailed, but also had no response.
You only heard back from Openreach once you had emailed with the signed agreement on May 5, together with a formal letter of complaint about how the matter had been handled. Now it was Openreach’s turn for radio silence. You have chased for a resolution to your complaint, but with no response.
I agree it was over the top for Openreach to be sending four letters in a row with little appreciation that recipients might struggle to understand what was being asked of them – and who might need to ask for input from family or friends.
In some situations, it can be sensible for a property owner to take legal advice before signing a wayleave agreement. Not many lawyers would move as quickly as Openreach was expecting your mother to.
Openreach needed her permission because it involved her property being used to provide a service to another homeowner. Standard rates or recompense apply in these situations, which for your mother meant a one-off payment of about £184.
But of more importance to her, and you, was an apology and a promise to improve the process.
Once I contacted Openreach, it responded at lightning speed, sending a bunch of flowers, a note to say sorry and a promise of a gift card.
An Openreach spokesperson says: ‘This was a very unusual and unfortunate situation, and we’re really sorry for causing such distress. We want to thank K.T. and her mother for their feedback and we’ve sent them a gesture of goodwill. We’re also using their feedback to review and improve our wayleaves processes.’
- Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk — include phone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organisation giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send original documents as we cannot take responsibility for them. No legal responsibility can be accepted by the Daily Mail for answers given.
