Ambulances take hours to turn up

Patients reported waiting hours for an ambulance as paramedics and hospital staff were stretched to the limit over the New Year weekend.

The situation became so bad that health bosses urged people not to call 999 unless they had a serious life-threatening injury or emergency, as the ambulance service struggled to cope.

Meanwhile East Kent NHS Trust bosses said they had to draft in extra staff to the A&E department at the William Harvey Hospital to treat patients.

One resident claimed it led to nearly seven hours of waiting when his 86-year-old aunt, who has dementia, suffered a deep cut to the head that sparked fears there might be bleeding onto her brain.

Roger West, from Smeeth, said: “We advised the service that our aunt could not remember falling over, so we didn’t know if she was unconscious after the fall.

“We were told we could take her to hospital, but she doesn’t like car travel, and my wife and I are not medically trained, we wouldn’t know what to do if something happened en route.

“We were told she would need an ambulance, and that one would be dispatched as soon as possible, but to expect a delay as it was not deemed an emergency.

“By this time, she was so exhausted through all the worry. We had tried to keep her still for nearly seven hours with blood running down her back. In the end she just wanted to go back to bed.”

Mr West said he fears the impact of more houses being built and whether the area has infrastructure to cope.

Another report said an elderly woman in Canterbury had to wait for several hours after falling and breaking her hip.

The ambulance service said it handled more than a million calls across the South East in just a six-hour period from 10pm on New Year’s Eve to 4am on January 1, at a rate of three calls per minute.