Man dies during 10-hour ambulance wait

A man was found dead in his home after an ambulance took 10 hours to arrive, an inquest has found.

Andrew Lewis, 55, called 111 on 7 May 2024, reporting weakness in his legs and an earlier fall.

His call was categorised as category three, meaning an ambulance should attend within 120 minutes, but it arrived 10 hours after his initial call - after his family had broken in and found him unresponsive.

Coroner Heidi Connor issued a prevention of future deaths report to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the Chief Executive of NHS England, who both said they would "respond in due course".

According to the coroner, Mr Lewis called 111 at 13:42 BST.

The decision to class the call as category three required confirmation by South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), which happened at 15:17, when the 120-minute clock began.

An ambulance should have attended by 17:17.

Police and Mr Lewis's family broke into his property and found him unresponsive, at which point the call was moved to category one - the most urgent.

The ambulance arrived at 23:45, by which point Mr Lewis had died.

The coroner said the reason for the delay was that there was not an ambulance to send earlier.

The inquest found Mr Lewis's cause of death was gastrointestinal haemorrhage, caused by alcoholic liver cirrhosis.

It also noted he had a low volume subdural haemorrhage - a brain bleed - that may have contributed to his death.

A spokesperson for South Central Ambulance Service said: "We offer our sincere condolences to Andrew's family.

"We recognise that waiting so long for the ambulance to arrive must have been awful, and it is not the service we aim to deliver."

The spokesperson said the response time was due to "significant demand" on the service, and that an internal review found there were "no missed opportunities for an ambulance to be dispatched at an earlier time".

They said they were implementing a trust-wide improvement programme focussed on recruitment and increasing fleet capacity.

Spokespeople for NHS England and the Department for Health and Social Care apologised to Mr Lewis's family and said they were considering the report.

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