Ambulance took 14 hours to reach OAP, 97, wedged next to loo

A 97-YEAR-OLD care home resident with dementia was left waiting for an ambulance on the floor of her bathroom for more than 14 hours.

The woman’s family has branded the wait “disgusting” and the ambulance service has now apologised.

The pensioner fell in her Stourbridge bathroom at 2pm on Monday and was left waiting beside her toilet on the floor until paramedics arrived at 4.29am.

Her family was told Russells Hall Hospital was full so the woman had to be taken to Sandwell General Hospital. It comes after it was revealed West Midlands Ambulance Service was to move to the highest ever warning level in its history because of queues outside hospitals.

The move to an unprecedented ‘level 25’ rating (out of 25) means the service expects patients to suffer ‘catastrophic consequences’ with repeated serious harm or death ‘almost certain’.

A family member of the pensioner, who did not want the family to be identified, said: “I think it’s disgusting, it’s just not acceptable.

“At 2pm she had a fall in her care home and they rang for an ambulance. She fell down the side of the toilet and wedged herself in a very peculiar position.

“At 6pm there was still no ambulance, or at 10.30pm. The care home staff put a pillow under her head but they couldn’t do anything else.

“At 4.30am the ambulance came, 14.5 hours later. She was on a cold floor, she’s 97 years old. She was in a lot of pain, couldn’t move at all. She’s got dementia so she really is very very vulnerable.

“It’s not acceptable. She’s a human being and you don’t treat human beings like this. It’s just cruel.”

A spokeswoman for West Midlands Ambulance Service said: “The trust would like to apologise for taking over 14 hours to respond to a patient in Stourbridge on Monday. Due to the delays being experienced at hospital, it took us longer than we would want to get to this lady.

“The whole of the NHS remains under severe pressure; hospital handover delays unfortunately mean patients waiting longer for an ambulance response, for which we are very sorry. We are working with all local NHS partners to reduce delays so crews can respond to the next incident as quickly as possible.

“Our staff and volunteers are working tirelessly to reach patients as quickly as possible, but we accept that on too many occasions, this is not as quickly as we would want and certainly not as quickly as patients and their loved ones would want.”