Pensioner 'crying in pain' as she waited eight hours for ambulance after breaking hip

Joy Lewis, 76, fell in a bedroom at her home in Ford, near Shrewsbury, on the morning of October 28, and her partner immediately called an ambulance.

Her son Les Cheley, who lives in Ludlow, rushed to the address to help but says it took around eight-and-a-half hours for an ambulance to arrive.

Today, he spoke of the 'frightening' ordeal and criticised the government for not taking action to improve NHS services.

"Her partner managed to pick her off the floor and get her on a chair but when he called for an ambulance, after it happened at about 6.10am, they said there was a five-hour wait," Les said.

"She couldn't move her leg. She was crying in agony and doubled up in pain.

"At about 10.30am the ambulance control rang again. I said she had broken her hip. They said it would still be about five hours.

"When they came the crew were saying they had come from Wolverhampton."

He said after an ambulance took her to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, she was stuck waiting another three-and-a-half hours inside the emergency vehicle outside the A&E department.

She finally went in for an x-ray where it was confirmed she had broken her hip and needed an operation, which she has now had.

Les' mother is currently recovering in hospital while having physiotherapy treatment.

He said: "I don't blame the NHS or ambulance trust, it's this government running these services down.

"There should be more resources. It's disgusting.

"There are more people coming into this world so we should be building and expanding our health service, not killing it and selling off our NHS.

"It's a sick world – a complete and utter joke."

West Midlands Ambulance Service has apologised for the delay.

A spokesman said: "Staff in our control room spoke with the caller to reassess the patient’s condition several times and explained that an ambulance would respond to the property on blue lights when one became available.

"Due to delays being experienced at hospital, it took us much 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.”

A spokesman for The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, which runs RSH, said: “We would like to apologise to Joy Lewis and her family for the wait in the ambulance outside the emergency department at the RSH.

“Our hospitals continue to be under extreme pressure and, at this time of unprecedented levels of demand, we are working with all our partners in the health and social care sectors to address these and provide the high levels of care we wish to give to all those who use our services.”

Hospital bosses have previously said they are aware of the ongoing impacts the lengthy delays in ambulance handover times are having on patients and apologised to those affected.

They said a number of actions were being taken to try and address the problems.

This has included work with WMAS and community organisations to reduce conveyances of some patients to hospital where appropriate, the opening of a new same day emergency centre at RSH, where construction is also under way on a new modular ward to add additional capacity.

Shrewsbury's A&E is also getting a £9.3m upgrade and bosses say the Future Fit scheme will help address issues in the longer term.