A POWYS pensioner waited over 12 hours for hospital treatment after a fall at her care home amid pressures on ambulances and hospitals.

Lisa Whitehouse, from Llanidloes, was shocked at the wait her mother had after suffering from a suspected broken hip after a fall in her care home on Monday December 12. The staff at the home called 999 after a doctor checked her condition.

“It took them ages, they just kept on getting cut off,” said Ms Whitehouse. “It was like an answer machine, and it just kept on getting cut off and cut off. As soon as they answered the person wouldn’t event take my mum’s name or date of birth or anything.

“The home rang back half an hour later. They answered, took her date of birth and said ‘we’ve got a lot of people waiting, a lot of emergency calls at the moment. Can’t you put your mother and take her yourself?’

“When they told me this over the phone it was a good job I was sitting down because I would have fallen over.”

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Mrs Whitehouse eventually rang 999 from her home to get an ambulance across – “they said it would be eight hours from the first call at 6.10pm – luckily she got picked up about 9.50pm.”

When they reached the hospital they were faced with a huge wait – “We followed her in, there were 12 ambulances waiting.”

This meant that Mrs Whitehouse’s mother was not able to be admitted to the hospital until the next morning, well over half a day after the first 999 call.

This was especially difficult as her mother suffers from Lewy Body Dementia which means she finds it difficult to be patient and struggles to be in crowds and unfamiliar places.

“She went into a cubicle, they phoned us straight away when she went in," Mrs Whitehouse added. "We went there and she was lying there in the cubicle and the ambulance men were there in the corridor, they were very good with her but mum was in an absolute state.

“She was getting angry, she was getting violent, she’d had her x-rays but it was very hard work. They kept us waiting there for ages before they discharged her – it was a nightmare.”

Her mother was found to not have broken her hip and was discharged but only after waiting for over another 12 hours. When she complained to a member of staff Mrs Whitehouse was told: “There’s nothing we can do about it, it’s just the way the NHS is at the moment.”

Jeff Morris, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s head of emergency medical services in Powys, said: “We would like to extend our sincere apologies to this patient for what we know will have been a painful and distressing wait for help.

“Emergency ambulances are to deliver life-saving immediate care and to take patients promptly to hospital for treatment, so it’s as frustrating for us as it is for patients when we can’t deliver that.

“Hospital handover delays remain the single biggest reason we cannot get to some patients promptly.

“On Monday, we lost 1,178 hours waiting to hand patients over to hospital colleagues, 41 of which were outside the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

“Despite record recruitment, including the creation of 400 extra posts in our Emergency Medical Service in the last three years, it is not enough to plug this lost capacity.

Sara Biffen, acting chief operating officer for The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH), said: “We continue to experience severe pressure. We are sorry that patients are having to wait long times and would like to thank them for their ongoing support as we continue to prioritise patients with the most critical needs.

“We are doing everything we can, alongside partners, to improve flow in and out of hospitals for all our patients.”