"Ambulance Delay"

My Father who is in his 80s and resident in a Leslie, Fife care home took unwell. The care staff contacted a GP who felt it necessary to admit my Father to hospital. The GP booked the ambulance at 6 pm. The service control room called a number of times to advise there would be continuing delays but at no time was my father re-assessed by either a GP or a clinical advisor from the control room as to whether he was safe to be delayed.

The booking GP had finished for the day so obviously hadn’t authorised these delays to the admission. The only comment from the control staff was that ‘if the GP had thought it was serious he would have made it an emergency’. As the carer then pointed out to the control ‘the GP obviously didn’t realise that 11 hours later his patient would still be waiting.  I now understand that the GP had requested a ‘1 hour Urgent Call’.

This isn’t a safe system. GPs give a timescale when booking these urgent admissions dependent on the patients clinical need,   so only they should be able to extend the timescale. To do this without any medical input is unacceptable.   The crew that eventually were tasked with his transport were friendly and efficient.   He eventually reached hospital and definitive care at 0530 in the morning.   ‘Urgent’ admissions can be and are upgraded to emergency admissions when the timeframe for the urgent is breached, so I think leaving an elderly frail unwell patient for 11 hours is an unacceptable level of service.