A call has been made for an investigation to be carried out into how a patient was left waiting for an ambulance in a doctor’s surgery for five hours.
Clare FM first reported that the woman had attended a GP in Tulla on Tuesday. The doctor decided that the patient should be transported to University Hospital Limerick for further treatment.
An ambulance was requested be despite several calls to the National Ambulance Service, no ambulance was available at the time. Five hours later, an ambulance finally arrived to transport the patient.
Clare Fianna Fáil Senator Timmy Dooley has already contract Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to seek an urgent review of this case, and the provision of ambulance services in the Mid-West region.
The National Ambulance Service said, “The HSE cannot comment on individual cases. Maintaining a client’s confidentiality is not only an ethical requirement for the HSE, it is also a legal requirement as defined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) along with the Data Protection Acts 1988-2018.”
“In recent months, health services, including Emergency Departments and the National Ambulance Service (NAS), continue to experience a surge in demand for services at a time when staff are also working hard to support Covid-19 related swabbing and vaccinations. At this time, the level of demand now exceeds the levels experienced in 2019, i.e. pre pandemic.
“Our staff continue to work incredibly hard trying to deliver normal health services, respond to the pandemic and support some staff whom needed to get annual leave during peak holiday season.
“The HSE is incredibly thankful for the continuing efforts of all of our staff in what remains challenging circumstances.
“As demand can exceed available resources, 999 calls are clinically triaged and prioritised to ensure that those patients with life threatening injuries or conditions receive the fastest response possible.
“If a 999 call is not time critical, then during busy periods, these calls will wait longer for a response. Thankfully, it remains the case that the majority of 999 calls do not relate to life threatening emergencies.
“For those calls that are not life threatening or clinically serious, the HSE encourages callers to consider other options such as GPs, Minor Injury Units, Pharmacists or Self Care. If you call 999 and your call is triaged as not life threatening or serious, we will respond as soon as we can,” the National Ambulance Service said.
County Clare is regularly left without emergency ambulance cover.
Ambulances based at Ennis, Scarriff, Ennistymon and Kilrush can all be out of the county on calls at the same time.
The National Ambulance Service operates a system called dynamic deployment where the nearest available ambulance is sent to a call if the local ambulance isn’t available.
Ambulances from Clare been sent to calls in Tipperary, Limerick and Connemara leaving their local area without emergency cover.
One paramedic said: “Dynamic deployment is a joke. It doesn’t work. The HSE will send an ambulance from anywhere in Ireland to Loop Head just so they can say they ‘sent a resource’. They have sent the air ambulance to the most minor incidents just so they can say they responded with a resource.”
“Ambulance staff will respond to where they are needed even though it pains us to know our own local area may have no cover for hours while we are God knows where or sitting at a hospital for hours and hours.”
In 2018, an elderly patient in West Clare died after suffering a cardiac arrest as he waited for an ambulance to arrive from 80 kilometres away in another county.
In 2015, a pensioner who was injured in a fall in Clare lay in pain for three hours until an ambulance arrived.
Also in 2015, an ambulance had to be sent 50 kilometres from Ennis to East Clare for a woman in her 60’s with ‘severe shortness of breath’ because local paramedics had been sent on a call in Limerick.
Other long-wait incidents include one where an ambulance had to be sent from Tipperary to the Cliffs of Moher after a woman fell on a trail and broke a leg.
An ambulance from Tuam in Co Galway was sent to a road traffic collision in Lissycasey while another ambulance from Newcastlewest in Limerick had to be dispatched to a collision in Ennis in recent years.