AMBULANCE response times must improve says a councillor, after a 95-year-old woman waited four hours following a serious fall in Cirencester.

Nancy Blannin fell and hit her head on a door frame at Mulberry Court care home last Tuesday, July 26, and despite “bleeding heavily” and being “in and out of consciousness”, waited almost four hours for an ambulance.

Gloucestershire county councillor Paul Hodgkinson has hit out at South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT), saying: “Our paramedics do a fantastic job across the county but are very stretched, and in rural parts of the Cotswolds ambulance response times are very poor.

“We’ve all heard of examples of where an elderly person has taken a fall or where someone has been taken sick at home and had to wait hours for an ambulance.

“In the 21st century this just isn’t good enough”

Carers at Mulberry Court first called for an ambulance for Mrs Blannin at 3.20pm, and her son Paul dialled a further three times before a paramedic arrived at 5.30pm.

The first responder assessed Mrs Blannin before calling an ambulance himself, which finally arrived at 7.12pm, taking her to Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

“She was begging for help because she was in so much pain,” said Mr Blannin. “The carers held a pressure pad on the wound for two hours and it was still bleeding heavily.”

He added: “There are not enough ambulances and staff, that’s the problem.”

A spokesman for SWASFT apologised for the delay.

“We are looking into the matter further,” he said.

“Our first resource arrived on scene at 5.30pm and the attending paramedic administered treatment until an ambulance arrived to convey the patient to Great Western Hospital at 7.12pm.

“We have a finite number of resources to respond and there was excess demand in the area at the time, meaning that no ambulance was immediately available to attend. We are dealing with an additional 470 incidents each day than we were five years ago and we need to prioritise calls which are life-threatening, where patients are unconscious and not breathing.

“In this case the patient was conscious and breathing throughout the incident, but the time taken to reach her is longer than we would have liked.”

In a report issued last year, it was revealed that SWASFT are failing to meet their 75 per cent target in responding to the most urgent calls within eight minutes.

The target for Red1 incidents (immediately life-threatening conditions) was achieved in only 38.46 per cent of cases in the Cotswolds last September with a new set of figures to be released next month.

Cllr Hodgkinson said: “I hope it will show an improvement.

“The issue was first brought to my attention at a county council meeting in May 2014 and then again earlier this year where unanimous cross-party support was given on both occasions for my motions calling for urgent improvements to ambulance response times in the Cotswolds, Stroud, Tewkesbury and the Forest of Dean.

“In spite of the fact that the issue of ambulance performance is being monitored by both the council’s health and care scrutiny committee (HOSC) and SWASFT joint health overview and scrutiny committee, improvements have yet to be made.”

“I want to see a number of steps taken in order to improve the situation.

“More ambulances and paramedics across the county – it is clear talking to paramedics and the staff that work dispatching ambulances that we simply don’t have the resource to meet demand.

“The bottom line is that there isn’t enough funding for the all-singing all-dancing ambulance service we expect.

“The government needs to step up to the plate in delivering on this.

Mr Blannin said his mother “had a scan, revealing a couple of cracked ribs, small compression of her vertebrae in her middle back, bruising and a badly cut head needing stitches.”

She remained in hospital for a couple of days and is recovering well.

Neil Le Chevalier, director of operations at South Western Ambulance Service said: “We acknowledge the points raised by Cllr Hodgkinson and continue to work closely with our colleagues at the CCG, the Gloucestershire HCOSC and other health partners.”