Man with broken hip has six hour ambulance wait in Ringwood

The elderly man fell over in Southampton Road near Ellis Jones Solicitors in Ringwood shortly before 5.15pm on Tuesday, August 16.

Leanne Frost left work at the solicitors around this time and saw the man already being tended to by two builders who rushed to help.

The man was bleeding from the hands and elbow and complained of “excruciating pain” to his hip.

Ms Frost called her parents for advice, as her father was in the fire service for 30 years and her mother is a nurse.

Her father Ian Frost told the Echo: “We told Leanne not to move him and to call an ambulance because a broken hip can be very serious. We only live in Verwood so my wife and I decided to go down and see if we could help.”

Area of Southampton Road in Ringwood where the incident happened. Picture: Google

The service was first called at around 5.20pm and Ian and his wife arrived soon after.

“You don’t know if there’s going to be internal bleeding so we just tried to make him as comfortable as possible,” he said.

One hour later and the situation remained unchanged. A further call was made to the service where the group was told of huge demand levels.

This process was repeated over the next five hours. Eventually, with temperatures dropping, an ambulance arrived at around 11.20pm – six hours after the man first fell.

The Frost family remained by the elderly gentleman’s side throughout the ordeal. Ian said: “I was flabbergasted that a 94-year-old with a suspected broken hip would not be considered a blue light incident in the first instance.

“The ambulance crew said they were so busy and understaffed. I said to them that I didn’t blame them because they do amazing work – they’re just not being funded correctly.

“But to have a man that age left for six hours with a broken hip just staggered me. It’s not acceptable.”

South Central Ambulance Service

Mark Ainsworth, director of operations at South Central Ambulance Service, said: “We firstly want to offer our apologies to the patient for how long it took us to reach them.

“While we want to respond to all patients as soon as we can, calls are prioritised based on clinical urgency to ensure those who are sickest receive the life-saving care and treatment they require as quickly as possible.

“Unfortunately, there will be occasions when this means some patients will wait longer, particularly at times of significant pressure on the service as we have been experiencing.

“We are working extremely hard within our own service and with our healthcare partners to provide as much resilience in the system as we can to limit delays in responding.

“We will always be as open as we can about this and provide the best care and advice we can in the circumstances we are presented with, though we do recognise and understand the distress this causes.”