THE HUSBAND of a Dundee woman who was sent home from Ninewells Hospital without treatment and died the following day said he was “shocked and very disappointed” at the outcome of an inquiry into her death.

Peter McGinnis said, “I do feel an opportunity has been missed to serve the public interest.”

He was speaking after the findings of a long-running fatal accident inquiry into the death of Margaret McGinnis (57), conducted before Sheriff Grant McCulloch, were published yesterday.

The sheriff ruled no reasonable precautions could have prevented Mrs McGinnis’ death the day after she was released without treatment from Ninewells.

The sheriff said that, while it would have been sensible to admit Mrs McGinnis for observation, her death the next day was not foreseeable when the decision was taken to discharge her on July 29, 2003.

Her husband found her collapsed at their home on July 30 and, despite attempts to resuscitate her, she was later pronounced dead in Ninewells.

In his judgement, the sheriff recalled evidence from the fatal accident inquiry into the case and found that no defects in working had contributed to Mrs McGinnis’s death. He found the cause of death to be “arrhythmia brought on by chronic rheumatic heart disease (previous mitral valve surgery).”

The inquiry heard that Mrs McGinnis was generally in poor health and had been admitted to hospital three times in 2003 with an undiagnosed complaint.

Consultant Ninewells physician Dr Nigel Reynolds suggested to the inquiry that Dr Jason Hill, the registrar who decided to discharge Mrs McGinnis after she had been sent to hospital earlier that evening by her GP as a matter of urgency, had been “complacent” and “a bit blinkered in his approach,” given his familiarity with the patient.

But while Dr Reynolds said he would have handled the case differently, on a clinical analysis the decision to discharge was not wrong.

In the sheriff’s view, “whilst admission would have been sensible, the decision to discharge was, on balance, open to Dr Hill to take and did not of itself lead to her death.”

Dr Hill is now a consultant in New Zealand and chose not to return for the inquiry. The sheriff agreed with depute fiscal Douglas Wiseman that any failure by Dr Hill did not fall within the scope of the inquiry and could be considered in the context of other court proceedings.

Mr McGinnis said, “Every single doctor that was a witness was asked if they had treated my wife, would they have done anything different and if they had, would she have lived? They reckoned she would have.”