Sheffield man waited four hours for ambulance after stomach pains before dying in hospital

Arthur Jepson dialled 999 after experiencing stomach pains at his home in High Green, and the call was initially classed as being less urgent.

But when a paramedic called back around an hour later, the 83-year-old’s condition was upgraded to category three – or urgent – for which an ambulance is expected to arrive within two hours in 90 per cent of cases.

It wasn’t until 7.31pm that day, September 16, 2018, that an ambulance eventually arrived at Mr Jepson’s home – almost four hours after his initial call.

He sadly died 11 days later, with his cause of death given as a spontaneous small bowel perforation and ischaemic heart disease.

Concerns about the response from Yorkshire Ambulance Service were raised at the inquest into his death.

Assistant coroner David Urpeth subsequently wrote to the trust, saying: “In my opinion action should be taken to prevent future deaths and I believe you have the power to take such action.”

The inquest concluded that Mr Jepson had died of natural causes, but Mr Urpeth said evidence showed that pressure on resources was high on the day of his call and a two-hour review to see if the incident needed to be re-categorised never happened.

“Whilst the evidence at inquest was that this is unlikely to have changed the outcome in this case, it was a concern to me that it could be in another case,” added Mr Urpeth.

A spokeswoman for Yorkshire Ambulance Service said: “First and foremost, our thoughts are with Mr Jepson’s family.

“We have cooperated fully with the coroner in this case and have assured him that our patient call-back system within our Emergency Operations Centre has been reviewed.

“As a result of the review, our standard operating procedure has been modified to provide a structured approach to identifying incidents likely to breach the expected time frame for an ambulance response.

“The revised procedure includes the involvement of a senior clinical advisor who can escalate cases and re-categorise them as appropriate.”