Man left bleeding to death on cold porch at home during six-hour ambulance wait
A man was left bleeding to death on the floor due to a shortage of ambulances, an inquest heard.
Bakery founder Bill Latham fell at his home in Broughton, Lancashire, on September 12 before being found by his son Richard lying in the porch with his leg "bent under him at a funny angle". An ambulance was called for and despite the patient being assigned Category Three status - meaning paramedics should have arrived within two hours - it was more than six before any reached him.
Bill continued to deteriorate on the way to Royal Preston Hospital and a CT scan revealed he had suffered an uncommon trochanteric hip fracture which caused him to bleed internally. Doctors tried to "play catch up" with the blood loss but they were ultimately unable to do so and Bill died later that night.
The inquest into his death, held yesterday at Preston Coroners Court, heard paramedics had been unable to reach him sooner because of queues of ambulances outside hospitals in Blackpool and Preston, where pressure on A&E departments meant patients couldn't be handed over. Bill died from haemorrhagic shock caused by the hip fracture.
The fact that he was on blood-thinning medication for a heart condition meant that he was more at risk of bleeding. The inquest heard that, after lying on the cold porch floor for four hours, Bill's condition had begun to deteriorate. At around 7pm he turned to his family and said "God bless you", reports LancsLive.
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A consultant in emergency medicine at the Royal Preston Hospital described how doctors were "trying to play catch up as there had been a long time where Bill had been bleeding into his thigh". The doctor added: "However we were never able to catch up." Angela Lee from the North West Ambulance Service carried out a review of Bill's case following his death. She said that on the afternoon of September 11, Bill was one of 300 patients across the region waiting for an ambulance.
The delays were caused by ambulances being unable to clear hospitals with 12 queued up at Blackpool Victoria Hospital and five at the Royal Preston Hospital. "On that day there was a significant number of patients waiting for ambulances," she added. "It's caused by a lack of beds in the emergency department and people in AandE. It's a national problem."
Efforts to address the problem of ambulances being forced to wait at A&E include "cohorting patients" where several are left under the care of one ambulance crew. NWAS has also recently been awarded additional funding to add 28 ambulances to the fleet and 70 more clinicians to triage patients from the 999 control room.
However, despite the significant delay in getting Bill to hospital, Assistant Coroner Sian Jones said she was unable to find that arriving any sooner, or within the two-hour target time, would have made a difference to the outcome. "It was a particularly unpleasant and high-risk fracture because of its propensity to bleed excessively and which would have required aggressive and invasive surgery to repair it," she added.
"I accept that while Bill might not have been left lying in pain I can't make a finding that the outcome would have been different had he been taken to hospital any sooner." The coroner ruled that Bill's death was an accident.
The inquest was attended by Bill's children - Adrienne, Richard and Catherine, who described him as a "true gentleman". In a statement they said: "He was very much a family man and he and his wife had a very long and happy marriage and retirement together. He was a very practical man who liked to help people and was very much the true gentleman in terms of how he behaved and dressed. There was a large outpouring of affection for him after he died."
Bill founded Lathams with his wife Gwen in 1974, before the bakery business was sold four years ago. After the inquest the coroner asked Bill's children how their mother Gwen was getting on. "She is struggling," son Richard said. "She has her own health challenges but she's doing OK. She struggles with the fact that he died from a fall."
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