My 93-year-old mother waited 10 hours on the floor for an ambulance — SkimNews
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- Margaret Owen suffered fractures to her femur and shoulder after falling at home and waited 10.5 hours for an ambulance, lying on the floor in pain while her son Graham Anthony heard her cries for help.
- Graham Anthony called for an ambulance at 07:35 after his mother triggered her lifeline alarm, but a St John Ambulance worker did not arrive until 15:30, with the hospital-bound ambulance coming 90 minutes later.
- Welsh Ambulance Service chief operating officer Lee Brooks acknowledged the near-eight-hour delay was below standard and confirmed a preliminary review found aspects of the call handling requiring further investigation.
- NHS Wales re-categorised ambulance calls in July 2025 into purple, red, orange, yellow, and green tiers, with orange calls — serious but not immediately life-threatening — seeing median response times rise to nearly 1 hour 30 minutes.
- Welsh government stated that improving access to emergency care is a key priority and will publish a new emergency and acute care policy framework this autumn to address community response and hospital flow.
Why it matters: Over 10,900 patients waited 12+ hours for ambulances in August, showing this case reflects a systemic failure. With orange call response times worsening and no public targets for yellow or green categories, elderly and vulnerable patients face rising risks during delays that erode trust in emergency care.
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