Chronically ill pensioner left waiting for hours (From Haringey Independent)

Chronically ill pensioner left waiting for hours

7:00am Wednesday 25th March 2009 in

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A chronically ill pensioner has been left waiting for up to three hours, three times a week for an ambulance to take her home from her regular dialysis appointments.

Cynthia Hanison, 67, of Mayfair Terrace, Southgate, spends hours each week waiting for the non-urgent ambulance service, run by a private firm hired by the NHS, to take her home from Barnet Hospital.

She needs dialysis three times a week for around four hours, after her kidneys stopped working in 2005 when she suffered from pancreatitis. Since January last year, when she fractured her hip, she has also been unable to move unaided.

“It’s shocking, to put it mildly,” said Mrs Hanison. “All I can do is sit there and look around. It’s very tiring.”

Mrs Hanison’s husband Sidney, 71, said the situation has been going on for months.

“They must be charging the NHS a lot of money and they’re not providing a service,” he said. “It makes me very angry and annoyed. I’m a patient sort of man but this has got on top of me.

“There are many patients using this service and it could make them worse. Cynthia can be sat there in a chair in a hospital doing nothing for three hours.

“People come in coughing and sneezing, if she caught an infection it could be the end of her.”

The service is run by a firm called A&L Ambulances and is commissioned by the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust, which operated Hampstead’s Royal Free Hospital.

A spokesman for the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust said: “We are very sorry that the service provided to Mrs Hanison has at times fallen short.

“A formal complaint has been lodged and we will be acting upon the recommendations of our investigation into that complaint.”