Ambulance report is expected to highlight delays in Maura Porter case

 

A report to be published later is expected to highlight delays in ambulances responding to ‘999’ calls.
The Health Information and Quality Authority report will point to problems with crews being held up at hospital emergency departments.
Among the cases expected to be addressed by the report is that of 70 year old Maura Porter, who died after she was struck by a car in Carndonagh on December 30th last year. The Irish Times, which has seen the document, is reporting that the report finds there was a five-hour back-up of ambulances at Letterkenny General Hospital, and that led to her beiong left on the roadside for almost an hour for an ambulance.
She died at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry several hours later.
The report finds that of the eight other ambulances rostered for duty in the county on the day, five were queuing outside Letterkenny hospital’s emergency department waiting to transfer patients in for treatment. They were delayed for between two hours and 11 minutes and four hours and 42 minutes.
The report is understood to conclude that if these ambulances had been released from the hospital in a timely manner, the delay in the Maura Porter case would not have happened.