Councillor tells of Chesham woman's ordeal (From Bucks Free Press)

Councillor tells of Chesham woman's ordeal

5:43pm Tuesday 25th November 2008 in

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A SHOPPER was left lying in a car park in the rain waiting for an ambulance for more than an hour, a councillor told a shocked NHS meeting today.

Although a motorbike paramedic arrived swiftly to the scene of the fall, in Chesham, the woman had to wait to be taken to hospital, they were told.

An NHS manager said the account, from Chiltern District Council member Noel Brown, was “not acceptable”.

The longest any patient should wait for an ambulance is 19 minutes, irrespective of the seriousness of the call.

It came as the meeting was told ambulance services were not performing well enough in Buckinghamshire, despite getting above-inflation cash settlements.

Councillor Brown, who attended today’s meeting of Buckinghamshire NHS Primary Care Trust as a member of the public, drew gasps as he told the story from other residents.

He said: “I was in the presence of someone who had had an accident and fallen down and, initially, we thought it might be a heart attack.

“They got a rapid response there. This poor woman was left lying in the public car park in the pouring rain for over an hour before there was an ambulance, which came from Aylesbury in the end.”

The fall happened in High Street and a motorbike paramedic was first on the scene, he told the Bucks Free Press.

Interim director of commissioning at the PCT Colin Thompson said: “That is not acceptable. That is not what we want to see for Buckinghamshire.”

Stewart George, chairman of the PCT, which dishes out NHS cash in the county, said the authority had made it “quite clear that we were unhappy about the contract performance” for ambulance services.

He and PCT chief executive Ed Macalister-Smith are to meet their counterparts at South Central Ambulance Service, which manages the 999 service, to discuss their concerns.

This afternoon’s meeting, in Aylesbury, was told only 66 per cent of ambulances are getting to the most serious calls in the county within the target time of eight minutes. The target is 75 per cent.

And board members expressed dismay that the service was not hitting targets despite the PCT putting in “above inflation” cash settlements.

The rural nature of south Buckinghamshire in particular has often been cited as a reason for the ambulance service’s problems in hitting the target.

Paramedic bosses have said changes to how the target is measured has made their job tougher.

Under new rules the target clock starts ticking as soon as the 999 call is connected to the control room, whereas before it was active from when the call was sent to an ambulance crew. This adds vital minutes to the response time.

Last month the ambulance service got a sceptical response from the PCT after putting forward radical proposals to meet the target.

This included different responses to urban and rural areas. This would see, for example, a paramedic sent in a response car sent to assess a patient in a rural area who would then decide if they needed an ambulance to take them to hospital (see link, right).