UNIVERSITY Hospital Lewisham “failed” to protect a suicidal dad-of-three who jumped to his death just minutes after he was released from A&E, an inquest heard.
Simon Moss, 49, was rushed to hospital in February last year after he climbed onto the roof of his Greenwich townhouse, threatening to kill himself.
Police managed to coax Mr Moss down and paramedics took him straight to University Hospital Lewisham.
But just an hour-and-a-half later Mr Moss was released from hospital after a mental health nurse judged he was not going to take his own life.
Minutes later Mr Moss jumped to his death from a nearby multi-storey car park.
Neil Sheldon KC, representing Mr Moss’s family, told an inquest into his death: “Simon was brought into hospital as an emergency with a serious life-threatening illness – a mental illness.
“An hour and a half later he left Lewisham hospital with no diagnosis, having received no treatment, and with no management plan beyond ‘wait for a couple of weeks and see if you hear from your GP’.
“I suggest that in these circumstances there was a stark failure to provide this deeply unwell man with the treatment and support he required.”
The inquest heard Mr Moss had been suffering from delusions in the days before his death.
He feared someone was going to take his children, believed he was being watched on CCTV and told his wife not to take the bins out because “they are coming to get you”.
On the morning of February 14, he climbed onto his roof and made a verbal threat to take his own life to his wife.
Police and paramedics were called to the scene and Mr Moss, who worked as a partner at private equity firm Hermes, agreed to go to hospital.
Stuart Matthews, a London Ambulance Service incident response officer who attended the incident, said: “He looked like a man that had given up.
“Often when you go to things like this they rebel and try not to go to hospital.
“(But) if I said to him I will walk you to hospital he would have said yes. He was a man with no fight in him and in my experience that’s the greatest risk.”
In an unusual step, Mr Matthews followed the ambulance carrying Mr Moss to hospital as he wanted to reiterate the risk to the medical staff.
He added: “The hospital sees a lot of patients in mental health situations and I wanted to say to them that I thought this one was credible.”
But key parts of Mr Moss’s ambulance records – including that he had made a verbal threat to kill himself – were not passed to the mental health nurse who carried out his assessment at University Hospital Lewisham.
The hospital said this was due to “human error”, with staff failing to upload the full notes to the computer system.
Helen Kattall, the CBT therapist who assessed Mr Moss at the hospital, told the inquest she would have asked a doctor for a second opinion had she known about his threat to kill himself..
Explaining her assessment, she said: “He was not mumbling to himself or hearing voices. He was just sitting comfortably and relaxed talking to me.
“I asked him about him saying the CCTV was watching him and he denied that.
“When I asked him why he was on the roof he said he just wanted space to be alone and think. I asked him of all places to go, why the roof.
“He said nothing really and said he was stressed and thinking a lot. He told me he was stressed because he was being laid off.
“He told me he would never take his own life as he wouldn’t do that to his family. That was powerful for me.”
Ms Kattall said she wanted to let Mr Moss’s wife know about his discharge but did not have her number.
She added that Mr Moss, who previously studied at the University of Oxford and Harvard University, told her he would let his wife know the plan – and later said he did not have his phone on him.
Just minutes after his release from hospital Mr Moss took his own life.
Mr Matthews was shocked when discovered what had happened to Mr Moss, despite his best efforts to warn the hospital.
He said: “I was upset when I arrived at the second call and recognised it was Mr Moss.
“I was told he was discharged at 11.51am and we received a call at 12.02pm about him jumping.
“I was perplexed and angry that he wasn’t still in the hospital and that this had happened to him.”
In a tribute shared with the University of Oxford, Mr Moss’s father, Malcolm, said: “Simon is sadly missed by his loving wife and three children, his parents, three sisters and all of his other close relatives and many friends. A life cut short too soon.”
The inquest continues.
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