A 93-year-old woman had to lie on the floor for 10-and-a-half hours with broken bones while waiting for an ambulance. Margaret Owen fell in her home on 4 October and her son Graham Anthony went over after getting a call from her lifeline alarm at 06:15. He said an ambulance was called at 07:35, but a St John Ambulance worker only came at the request of the Welsh Ambulance Service at 15:30.
It was another 90 minutes until an ambulance came and took Margaret to hospital. "Listening to her repeatedly asking for help and sometimes screaming in pain has left me with a feeling of hopelessness," said Graham. Welsh Ambulance Service boss Lee Brooks said he was sorry to hear about Margaret's experience.
Anthony said his mum, from Abercynon, Rhondda Cynon Taf, has dementia and struggled to remember exactly what happened. "I don't know how long she was on the floor for before she activated the alarm," he said. "She was obviously in clear distress on the floor... her right leg was immobilised, and she was complaining of pain in her right arm.
Margaret suffered fractures to her femur and shoulder and needed surgery, but is yet to leave Royal Glamorgan Hospital. While Anthony praised the professionalism of the ambulance crew who responded and said they dealt with his mum "really well", he admitted the experience "knocked my confidence in our health service's ability to respond". According to the latest published figures, 10,977 patients waited 12 hours or more for an ambulance in August, 733 (6.3%) fewer than the previous month.
Anthony put a post on Facebook page sharing his mother's experience, saying the delay was not acceptable "for anyone, let alone a 93-year-old". He said the response "has been huge", with hundreds of people sharing their experiences of elderly relatives going through similar waits for medical care. The Welsh government said it recognised how distressing it could be to wait for care when someone has suffered an injury and that improving access to care was a "key priority".
It added that a new emergency and acute care policy framework would be published this autumn, setting out how plans to improve emergency community response and hospital flow. "It's not a service, is it really? It's a huge systemic problem and nobody seems to be getting to grips with it," Anthony said.
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