In July 2001 the father of a B12 patient made a formal complaint to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, that his son had been prescribed the wrong drugs by a hospital consultant. This complaint was passed to the Chief Executive and was neither acknowledged nor replied to. Having not replied within the statutory compliance period the Chief Executive was asked to put the complaint forward for Independent panel review, which was part of the statutory process. This request was ignored despite a number of requests. The Chief Executive then asked the Medical Director of another Trust to investigate the complaint, this was done without notifying the complainant, the medical Director agreed to investigate the complaint, and likewise did not notify the complainant of the investigation. On the 20th August 2001 Chelsea and Westminster Hospitals Medical Director wrote the following to the Medical Director investigating the complaint, "I believe that you are heavily engaged in helping to review our problems with Vitamin B12 and neurologists. It may help if you and I were to have a conversation and I shall be back from annual leave on Tuesday 28th August." It is not known what contact Chelsea and Westminster’s Medical Director had with the Medical Director investigating the complaint or why he felt he had to initiate contact. Sometime after this contact the Medical Director investigating the complaint removed himself from the investigation. The investigation was then taken over by one of his consultants. In February 2002 the investigation was concluded, in favour of the consultant. the Chief Executive wrote the following to the complainant. "As you are aware, in order to provide an objective and impartial response, we asked a Senior Consultant [from a local hospital] to review the concerns relating to this referral." The Chief Executive's reference to an impartial response was an untruth, the consultant who was the subject of the complaint was also employed by the Medical Director who started the investigation, and was also a colleague in the same clinic of the Consultant who finished the investigation. I can only guess that the reason the Chief Executive asked another hospital to become involved was because she had ignored a statutory process for what was very serious complaint, and in case the complaint was taken further she had to regain credibility. The relationships discovered about the consultant who was the subject of the complaint and those investigating the complaint, indicates that the result was a foregone conclusion. All of the above is supported by documentry evidence.