Patients told to make own way to hospital as ambulance crews overwhelmed with callouts

The organisation says it was overwhelmed with the volume of calls through to its service on Thursday 8 December. Credit: PA

Patients needing hospital treatment were asked to make their own way to hospital because the ambulance service was too overwhelmed.

In a social media post, the Welsh Ambulance Service urged people with non-life threatening conditions to get to hospital themselves on Thursday evening as they struggle to keep up with demand after being inundated with callouts.

The appeal comes after a recent report showing patients at the emergency department in Swansea's Morriston Hospital were left sleeping in chairs for days, and without access to food and heating.

Cases of people having to wait hours for ambulances are becoming more and more common, with the news earlier this week that an 85-year-old man with terminal cancer waited seven hours for an ambulance.

That was despite him living directly across the road from his local hospital in north Wales. 

Keith Royles, from Bodelwyddan, Denbighshire, fell and broke his hip while cutting grass in September this year.

The Welsh Ambulance Service, who apologised to Mr. Royles and his family, said hospital handover delays are the “single biggest reason” why they cannot get to some patients quickly.

Last month ITV News reported that Ambulance response times for the most serious and immediately life-threatening calls in Wales have hit a record low, Welsh Government figures showed.

In October, just 48% of ambulances arrived at red calls - which means the patient is in imminent danger of death - within the target time of eight minutes.

That is 2% lower than the previous month and the same time last year.

There is a target for 65% of these calls to be responded to within the target time, but this not been met for more than two years.

It comes after an ITV Wales investigation found ambulances are waiting for up to a day to offload their patients to hospitals.

A lack of available beds in hospitals means ambulance crews are often spending their entire 12 hour shifts sitting outside emergency departments.

The recent influx of 999 calls to the service comes shortly after new UKHSA data showed Wales has a higher Strep A and Scarlet Fever infection rate than any area of England.