A woman who waited nine hours for an ambulance after experiencing heart attack -type symptoms says the blame lies with the "entire structure of the NHS ".
Susan Burns, 71, says the ambulance service is doing its best but has "to sit and watch people dying" as it waits to offload patients in long queues at the hospital.
Susan was at home in Stanley Moor, Stoke-on-Trent, on October 8 when she developed chest pains and was shortness of breath, reports Stoke-on-Trent Live.
Her husband called 999 at 6.45pm but an ambulance did not arrive until 4.19am the following morning - despite two follow-up 999 calls.
She was taken to the Royal Stoke University Hospital where she remained for a number of days. She was later readmitted before finally being discharged on Sunday, October 16.
Susan recalls seeing 19 ambulances waiting outside the Royal Stoke in the early hours of October 9.
West Midlands Ambulance Service has apologised for its delayed response.
Susan said: “It’s absolutely disgraceful. It has nothing to do with the ambulance service per se because they are there to do their shifts - they go out and help people.
“They have to stay with the patient until they are accepted via A&E. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) will no longer allow a patient into the hospital to be put on a trolley and wait in corridors.
“The ambulance service is not doing its job because it is waiting for patients to be offloaded into A&E. The liability lies with the basic structure of the NHS.
“There’s no point throwing money at something when you haven’t got the facilities to actually fix it. I was one of the lucky ones that escaped but there are many cases where people will die in ambulances.”
Susan added: “People are going to A&E because they can’t get GP appointments and are blocking the system up. People are in the hospital and can’t get out because they have no care when they get home.
“When you are in the hospital they can’t wait to get you out because they need the beds. It’s a system failure right across the board and I don’t understand why we have to accept this situation in 2022, it’s like a third-world country.
“It’s untenable. The ambulance service has to sit and watch people dying and that cannot be right."
An ambulance service spokesman said: “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.”
Royal Stoke medical director Dr Matthew Lewis said: “A high number of patients attending our emergency departments, combined with the challenges of increasing Covid-19 infection rates and an increase in the number of patients medically fit to be discharged as well as staff absence due to Covid-19, has increased pressures on delivering consistently timely care for our patients.
"We would never want our patients to wait unnecessarily and would like to apologise to our patients who unfortunately have had to wait to be seen."
Dr Sean O’Kelly, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, said: “There is no doubt that the current impact of escalating pressure on the NHS is severe – with unacceptably long delays for patients waiting for ambulances or for admission to hospital clear manifestations of the problems services face.
"There are very real concerns about the significant risk to patients waiting unacceptable amounts of time for medical help and the impact on paramedics and hospital staff as they do all they can to deliver safe care under the most demanding circumstances.
“As part of the CQC’s recent urgent and emergency care inspection programme, we carried out inspections at a number of ambulance trusts.
"These inspections have highlighted the challenges services face and the need for system-wide improvement to alleviate the pressure on 999 services.
“Where we have identified concerns we have made clear that system-wide action is necessary to keep people safe and we will continue to monitor services and use our regulatory powers where necessary.”
