Connemara patients waiting up to four hours for ambulance

A Clifden GP has hit out at the slow response times of ambulances which he insists are endangering the lives of seriously ill patients across Connemara.

In a letter submitted by the Leenane and Maam Ambulance Steering Group to Oireachtas members to campaign for an improved service, Dr John Casey Junior outlined cases involving his patients who were forced to wait hours for an ambulance.

In one incident, a 50-year-old woman visiting the area presented with severe acute abdominal pain, was extremely unstable and in a lot of pain. It took three hours for an ambulance to arrive, during which time the patient had to be given morphine intravenously. She then had to face into a journey of up to 90 minutes to reach University Hospital Galway (UHG).

Another man at Clifden Community School was suffering epileptic fits every 15 minutes. His ambulance did not arrive for at least two-and-a-half hours.

“Amazingly this gentleman survived this episode, but given the fact of his presenting condition there is no doubt in my mind that his survival was a minor miracle.”

A patient in 2011 who presented with sudden stroke was not as lucky.

“By the time he made it into Galway, the four-hour window had passed and unfortunately it was too late to receive the clot busting drug that would have potentially saved him from severe disability. He is now unfortunately residing in a nursing home.”

Dr Casey wrote that he had enormous respect for the National Ambulance Service and in his six years stationed in Connemara he has found the local crew to be extremely professional and caring.

“However there is no doubt in my mind that far too often there are patients who are not getting the immediate care that they need due to the lack of services.”

He pointed out that two ambulances cover the entire Connemara area, one in the south, stationed at Carraroe, and the second in Clifden, leaving North Connemara exposed. These two ambulances leave Connemara during busy times, particularly on weekends to cover urban areas such as Galway and Castlebar.

Figures on 999 ambulance response times from last year show that just over a third of life-threatening cardiac or respiratory cases in the west were responded to within 19 minutes for the month of July – the worst month of the year for response times.

The 19-minute target for 85% of cases is the standard set by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) for “echo” calls. In the west that target was not reached for the entire year.

The best performing month for the service was September, when 83% of incidents were responded to within 19 minutes. The worst was July when just 37% of rigs arrived on the scene in that timeframe.

For five months of the year, half of the ambulances arrived outside of that critical window.

The response times were even slower for incidents classified as delta emergency calls, which are life-threatening cases not involving cardiac or respiratory complaints. The percentage of calls answered within 19 minutes reached 51% for November, the best performing month of 2014.

The Leenane and Maam ambulance steering group said the cases outlined by Dr Casey show that response times are totally unacceptable and fall far short of the recognised standards. They are calling for greater investment for the region.

“We feel that we have highlighted a failing in the system regarding availability of ambulances in the Connemara area. We all appreciate the work carried out by the National Ambulance Service but they can only work within the confines of the budgets as set out by the Government,” said PJ Leavy.

In March, Fine Gael Galway West TD, Seán Kyne, said an investment of €5.4 million for 50 new paramedic posts will boost ambulance services in the west.

The investment will see an additional eleven paramedics allocated to the ambulance base in Tuam and eleven will be allocated to Mulranny, which were highlighted in internal reports as being poorly served and ‘ambulance black spots’.