Elderly woman waited FOUR hours for ambulance after falling in street

An elderly woman who fell and injured her hip in the street waited more than four hours for an ambulance on the emergency service’s second busiest day on record



West Midlands Ambulance Service received a call at 1.07pm on Thursday alerting them to the incident on Whitaker Road, Allesley Park, but the ambulance did not arrive until more than four hours later.

A spokesperson apologised for the time it took to get to her and said they received the second highest number of calls on record on the day she fell on December 14.

Luckily, the woman, who is in her 80s, was helped by passers-by and looked after in a nearby surgery while she waited.

One witness who contacted the Telegraph said the woman appeared to be in “severe pain” and had injured her left hip.

The woman was helped into a bookmakers before staff at Allesley Park Medical Centre brought her a wheelchair and sat her in the surgery.

Paramedics arrived at 5.18pm and gave her pain relief for a suspected leg fracture before taking her to University Hospital Coventry.

A spokesperson for West Midlands Ambulance Service said: “We would like to apologise to the patient and her family for the time it took to get an ambulance to them.

“Based on the information provided by the caller, the case was classed as not life threatening and placed into the third of four categories of seriousness. This meant we had to deal with life-threatening and other more serious calls before this one."

It certainly IS life-threatening at that age, it's how my grandfather died!