A pensioner who collapsed was left lying on the floor waiting for an ambulance for five hours because local call handlers were too busy.
Leon Moody, 72, fell over in his home in Kingham, Oxfordshire, at around 9am on October 5.
His carer immediately called for an ambulance and Mr Moody’s son Mark, 35, from nearby Chipping Norton, rushed over. They were too scared to move him in case his injuries got worse.
After about an hour they had heard no word from South Central Ambulance Service, so Mark rang 999 again to check where the vehicle was.
It took five minutes for his call to be answered and the call handler said he had been put through to the Yorkshire branch — located more than 200 miles away — because local services were too busy to answer.
The ambulance eventually arrived after 2pm, Mr Moody said.
It comes amid an ambulance crisis across Britain, which has seen severely ill patients left waiting in the back of ambulances outside A&E units for 12 hours.
Ambulances are supposed to hand patients over to the hospital within 15 minutes of arriving so they can get back on the road– but 35,000 patients waited for more than an hour in September. It has led to concerns that patients are coming to harm, with the queues linked to two deaths last week.
Leon Moody, 72, said he has ‘lost faith in the health service’ after he fell in his home in Kingham, Oxfordshire, and had to wait more than five hours for an ambulance
His son Mark (right) says he was put through to Yorkshire call handlers because the local health service was so busy
Mr Moody’s son told the Oxfordshire Mail he was ‘gobsmacked’ by the wait.
He said: ‘An hour went by (after the original call) and we had not heard anything and nobody had arrived.
‘Obviously, my dad was in a lot of pain and was distressed because of having to lie on the floor like that, so I rang 999 and it was just ringing and ringing.
‘It was going on like this for about three minutes.
‘I got through to someone and explained to them that my dad has had a fall. The call handler was getting the details up and he said: “You are in the south-east aren’t you?”.’
He claimed the call handler told him Yorkshire was the closest call centre available to answer because all the local services were too busy.
Mark said he ‘could not believe’ how poor the service was.
He was put through to another ‘really apologetic’ call operator after waiting more than an hour again with no sign of the ambulance.
When the ambulance finally arrived hours later still, Mr Moody said the paramedics were ‘brilliant’.
But he said during the wait he kept thinking what would have happened had his father’s fall been more serious and he was left there stranded.
He said: ‘I was just sat there thinking, what if my dad was having a heart attack or something really serious?
‘Those minutes they took to answer would have made all the difference between life or death. I have never seen anything like it.’
He said his father is doing ‘okay’ but wants ‘people to take notice of what is going on’ and for his ‘voice to be heard’.
South Central Ambulance Service said: ‘While we always want to respond to all our patients as soon as we can, calls are prioritised based on clinical need to ensure those who are sickest receive the care and treatment they require as quickly as possible.
‘Unfortunately there will be occasions when this prioritisation means some patients will wait longer, particularly at times of extreme pressure on the service as we are seeing currently, but we would be happy to talk the patient and their family to explain more about this process if they would like to get in touch with us directly via our patient experience team.’
The service covers the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, has been approached for comment.
On Saturday it said it was ‘overwhelmed’ with calls, blaming GP waiting-list backlogs, ambulance queues at hospitals for its slow services.
It declared a ‘critical incident’, asking people to only call 999 in a ‘life threatening or serious emergency’.
Earlier this week, ambulance leaders described the ‘highest level of emergency activity in history’ and reports from around the country paint a bleak picture of ambulances queuing for hours outside busy hospitals.
Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, said: ‘The ambulance sector is experiencing some of the highest levels of emergency activity in its history and this is regrettably leading to delays in the sector’s ability to respond to some patients.’
And the College of Paramedics warned the UK faces a ‘bleak’ few months as the NHS prepares to fight its standard winter pressures on top of Covid.
Richard Webber, a paramedic and spokesman for the college, said: ‘This issue has been bad for a while, hospitals have been so much busier.
‘Patients are being admitted and what’s happening is they cannot move them straight into A&E, so ambulances have become cabs waiting to unload outside hospitals.
‘Our members are reporting delays of four to six hours in getting to people, which means there can be up to 15 ambulances waiting outside hospitals with patients inside.
‘This also creates a backlog of 999 calls. I’m talking (about) up to 300 calls for a service to deal with, leaving people to wait at home potentially in need of serious medical attention.
‘Everything is therefore taking longer; staff are dealing with three or four incidents every shift, when they would usually do as many as eight.’