Ambulance never reaches woman, 85, after fall in Gonerby

An 85-year-old woman was left waiting for an ambulance for an hour-and-a-half after falling and breaking her arm - but it never arrived.

The woman was waiting at a bus stop in Great Gonerby near the post office last Monday morning when she fell. She was looked after by other passengers who were waiting for the 9.28am bus into Grantham.

A passenger, who asked not to be named, said: “An emergency is surely an 85-year-old woman lying on a wet path. She was in agony, bless her.”

Terry Musson was driving by and stopped to see if he could help. Mr Musson said: “She was in severe pain. I just don’t think it is acceptable.”

The woman was eventually taken to hospital by her daughter who drove from Lincoln to take her.

Sam Smith, ambulance operations manager with EMAS, said: “We are sorry we were unable to get to the patient sooner on this occasion due to a high demand on our service. We recognise the distress that this has caused and hope the patient is recovering well.

“Every 999 call is assessed and, while patients with the most urgent and immediately life-threatening conditions will always be our priority, we aim to get to all patients as quickly as possible. This patient was assessed as a non-life threating category three emergency. Under the national standards we should reach such calls within 120 minutes and as soon as an ambulance became available it was allocated – 45 minutes after the first call.

“The ambulance was cancelled when a relative of the patient called to say they would make their own way to hospital. We are grateful they took the time to do this as it allowed us to reassign the crew to another emergency call.”