"Lack of Orthopaedic services at Monklands Hospital and Ambulance resources"

My mother fell in the ice - along with many, many others in the recent icy weather, whereby pavements and walkways were extensively left unsalted.  

The 999 ambulance (which took 1hr to arrive) took our mother to A&E at Monklands for initial investigation and then she had to be transferred to Hairmyres for orthopaedic assessment of her injury.  The operation that she requires cannot be carried out in Hairmyres/Lanarkshire as it is specialised and she needs to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Glasgow.  She has now been in Hairmyres for 6 days waiting for ambulance transfer.  She has been fasted on numerous occasions as it has been anticipated that she will be getting moved and thereby operated on when she arrives at the Queen Elizabeth.  

Along with no Orthopaedic service at Monklands, the lack of resource for ambulance services has had a huge impact.  I have tried to find out (unsuccessfully), when the removal of orthopaedic service was put in place, if there was any provision/resource made to the orthopaedic and ambulance service to allow patients to be transferred without delay from Monklands to the other Lanarkshire Hospitals sites, and if they are unable to carry out certain procedures, then for the onward transfer to Glasgow hospitals.  If there were Orthopaedic services at Monklands, I can only assume that she would have been transferred straight from being assessed at Monklands to Glasgow for her care, without transfer to Hairmyres, thus potentially avoiding her having to wait 6 days+ for her to be in the right place to be operated on.  

In this time, she is in acute pain, completely bed bound, has been fasted for 3 out of 6 days, is anxious and worried about her operation but also I believe at increasing risk of infection and DVT, not to mention the potential complications for her surgery and recovery.  

The care of the doctors in each of the Lanarkshire sites is not in question.  She was x-rayed, scanned and it was known that day in Monklands what her injuries were, and by the next day, at Hairmyres, what intervention/surgery would be needed, but to then have to wait this length of time for transfer is shocking to us.

We have been informed that the ambulances are continually diverted to 999 calls.  Of course, we understand the importance of prioritising calls and patients but surely the whole service doesn't grind to a halt due to one cold spell, in December in Scotland.  My understanding is that Winter Planning strategies are put in place over these months and again I would assume that ambulance provision would be part of that process.  

I would like to know if the events that we have encountered are "normal" for patients who are needing to access orthopaedic services in the ML5 area and why ambulance provision does not appear to be managed or resourced to allow 999 services and hospital to hospital transfer to work alongside each other.