Three-hour ambulance delay contributed to death of man in Sheffield hospital, says coroner

Katy Dickinson, assistant coroner for South Yorkshire West, has raised the issue with Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) following the death of Shaun Parks on December 13, 2022. She held an inquest earlier this month (December 15) and ruled that a “significant delay” in Mr Parks receiving treatment may have contributed to his death.

Ms Dickinson said that evidence at the inquest showed that there were not enough emergency medical ambulance dispatchers on duty to cope with forecast demand.

She added: “There was a significant delay in offloading patients at hospitals, which tied up resources and meant they were unable to respond to emergency calls.”

Mr Parks needed to be transferred to a specialist unit at the Northern General after he went to the emergency department at Doncaster Royal Infirmary (DRI) and was found to be having a heart attack.

Mr Parks had gone to the DRI around midnight on December 12, 2022 and waited to be seen for approximately an hour to 90 minutes until an ECG test was carried out and showed he was suffering a heart attack.

Resuscitation

He was moved to a resuscitation area of the department and a nurse contacted the ambulance service to transfer Mr Parks to the Northern General Hospital’s primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) centre.

The report says that the category 2 blue light ambulance was booked at 3.06am on December 13 and should have taken at the latest 40 minutes to arrive.

The ambulance service confirmed the ambulance was categorised correctly.

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An ambulance arrived at 6.29am and Mr Parks got to the Northern General at 7.15am.

The report says: “Mr Parks deteriorated during his time at Doncaster Royal Infirmary and his procedure at Sheffield’s PPCI unit commenced at 8.45. Mr Parks sadly died during the procedure at 10.17.

“There was a delay in the ambulance arriving to collect Mr Parks of 3 hours 18 minutes and 41 seconds.”

Risk

Following what she discovered during her investigation, Ms Dickinson prepared a prevention of future deaths report. She wrote in the report: “In my opinion there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken.”

She ruled “the ambulance response time has likely affected the outcome” for Mr Parks. Staffing at YAS was below the requirement to meet the expected demand.The report has been sent to the ambulance service and the NHS trusts for both hospitals, as well as Mr Parks’ family.

The organisations must respond by February 14, 2024 with details of action taken or proposed to be taken, setting out the timetable for this to happen, or they must explain why no action is proposed.