An 89-year-old woman who is understood to have fallen over was left lying on the pavement for two hours as she waited for an ambulance.
An ambulance was called to where the woman lay in Solihull town centre at 11.15 am yesterday, and it arrived at 1.27pm.
West Midlands Ambulance Service have since apologised, blaming the delay on "pressures in health and social care" which lead to ambulances caring for patients while they wait to be admitted to hospital, preventing them from promptly attending the next call.
A member of Solihull BID, who attended to the woman, told Birmingham Live, who reported the story, that she had had been on the floor for "two hours". They had been told not to try to move the elderly lady indoors in case she had broken her hip.
Big Issue seller Horst Liedtke, who was working close to where the pensioner was lying, said it was "disgusting" the woman had to wait so long.
"It is obviously a sign of them closing everything [health services] down. There is [Solihull Hospital] just around the corner with no more A&E - otherwise it [would] have never been like that."
The long wait was happening as the government's new Health Secretary Therese Coffey was preparing to address the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, a few miles away.
Coffey, speaking ahead of the conference, said she was not going to "sugarcoat" the challenges facing emergency services.
A West Midlands Ambulance spokeswoman said: “We would like to apologise to the patient for the delayed response.
“The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly.
"Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call. The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients."
In August, the head of the NHS urged people to avoid A&E where possible this winter in a bid to reduce pressure on the NHS.
In a letter to health chiefs, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said winter planning has begun earlier than usual, "recognising pressure on the NHS is likely to be substantial, particularly in urgent and emergency care".
Information attached to the letter asks hospitals to "implement your winter communications strategy to support the public to minimise pressures on urgent and emergency services".
The Daily Telegraph reported that a renewed "help us help you" campaign is to be launched later this year urging the public to be sparing in its use of 999 and A&E services, using them only for emergencies.
Last year, the NHS used TV adverts, social media posts and billboards to promote the use of the 111 online service for urgent issues which are not life-threatening instead of going to A&E.
It comes as the NHS faces a troubling backlog, with the number of people who have waited two years or more to receive treatment at around 6,700 in June after the Covid-19 pandemic caused waiting lists to mount.
