Patient died after one-hour wait outside packed A&E
A MAN died after waiting for hour in an ambulance outside overstretched A&E department.
Paramedics were told there was no room inside Worcestershire Royal Hospital for their patient.
His condition deteriorated and he was brought into A&E after an hour but suffered a cardiac arrest and died on a trolley in the corridor.
The tragedy happened on November 27 – days after Health Secretary Matt Hancock visited the hospital while campaigning.
A month earlier, medics were held up more than 11 hours with a patient outside theWorcester hospital.
On the same day, 34 ambulance patients waited more than an hour to be booked in.
An ex-soldier told how his 91-yearold dad spent seven hours in an ambulance outside A&E.
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Paul Reid, who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps, said his frail father was wheeled into a corridor which already contained 14 patients waiting on beds.
He said: “It was stacked with beds on either side making effective cleaning impossible, increasing the risk of disease transmission.
“I do health and safety examinations and if I’d come across this I’d have closed them down.
“Sitting waiting in the back of an ambulance is really quite criminal. I was in Iraq and Afghanistan and their hospitals are better than ours.”
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and West Midlands Ambulance Service say they are investigating what happened in the latest tragedy.
In a statement they said: “On the night in question there were a number of ambulances waiting longer than we would want outside.
“We are taking positive action but recognise that there is more that needs to be done.”
The case emerged as a Liverpool councillor told how she waited 17 hours in a “war zone” A&E department before finally getting a bed.
Tricia O’Brien, who is in her 60s, was taken to Royal Liverpool Hospital when she slipped on ice and broke her pelvis.
Describing the scene inside A&E, the Labour councillor said: “It was chaos, like a war zone, there were three ambulances there that couldn’t be used because the paramedics were waiting with patients.
“I counted around 13 trolleys in A&E with patients on waiting to be taken to beds. People who were in a really bad way.
“I was initially seen by a doctor in about four hours but then I waited in A&E for another 12-13 hours before I finally got taken on to a ward.”
The hospital said: “We are sorry to hear about Councillor O’Brien’s concerns and we would be happy to discuss these further with her.”