NHS chief ‘couldn’t risk ambulance’ for visit to A&E

THE chief executive of an NHS trust has said her husband drove her to A&E after she suffered a suspected stroke because she feared ambulance delays.

Deborah Lee, chief executive of Gloucestershire Hospitals Foundation Trust, said she had now recovered but warned that urgent action was needed from the Government.

Describing the events in a series of tweets she said: ”On Friday, I had a bit of a ‘turn’ – lopsided and unable to speak. Having heard me lamenting ambulance delays, my husband bundled me into his car and drove me to A&E …what if my husband hadn’t been there and my daughter had called for an ambulance and I’d been put in the Cat 2 ‘stack’?”

Ambulance response times in England

‘Having heard me lamenting ambulance delays, my husband bundled me into the car and drove me to A&E’

have risen to their worst levels on record, figures show.

Category 2 calls, which include suspected strokes and chest pains, should be responded to within 18 minutes on average.

In March, the most recent data show that South West Ambulance Service took an average of one hour and 53 minutes to respond to such calls.

This was 52 minutes above the England average last month.

Mrs Lee, who has more than 30 years’ experience in the NHS, said: “Through no fault of its own, the [South West] has the worst ambulance handover delays of any region; my system is working unrelentingly to solve this but to no great avail.”

“The problem isn’t the front door of hospitals, it’s the back.”

Mrs Lee called on the Government to overhaul social care by improving training and pay for staff.