An 84-year-old woman with a head injury spent 24 hours being treated in ambulances outside Wales' 'flagship' new hospital due to a lack of beds, her family said.
Judith McConnel, from Crossways, near Monmouth, suffered a fall on Monday, February 28 and badly cut her head. She was originally admitted to the minor injuries unit at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny, but at around 4pm she was transferred to The Grange University Hospital at Llanfrechfa, Cwmbran, by ambulance.
The pensioner's family said she was treated in as many as three different ambulances outside the £350m specialist and critical care centre for a total of 24 hours before being moved back to Abergavenny where a bed was finally found.
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The hospital has apologised to Mrs McConnell's family and said her "unacceptable" wait was caused by "ongoing pressures on our hospital services".
The Grange University Hospital has among longest A&E waiting times in Wales and the UK at present. Not far off half of patients (42.2%) had to wait more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged in January while 17.1% had to wait more than 12 hours.
"Even given the Covid situation, how could this happen?" said Mrs McConnel's son Alex Culpin, from Pen-Y-Lan Farm in Pontrilas.
"Mum said that after the first ambulance arrived in the grounds of The Grange, she was moved into other ambulances several times. I can only guess they must be rotating the ambulances as mobile triage rooms.
"She was taken from an ambulance and given a CT scan but was moved back to the ambulance to spend the night. I presume the scan was carefully analysed and the prognosis was that she needed to be watched closely rather than operated on. But I still find it astonishing that a brand new hospital was unable to give her proper care and offer her a bed for the night.
"The irony is she then had to wait for an ambulance to take her back to Nevill Hall Hospital where she was sat in the first place 24 hours before.
"One of the staff that treated her said Monday was the worst day so far in the short history of The Grange with regard to poor performance. She of course highlighted the amazing efforts of the Welsh ambulance staff in treating her and keeping her comfortable."
Alex, the managing director of award-winning Ty Gwyn Cider, said his mother was given oxygen on the back of one of the ambulances. He added that the design of the hospital, as well as the availability of beds and NHS staff, need to be called into question.
Monmouth MP David Davies, who has raised Mrs McConnel's case with the health board, described the situation as "absolute chaos".
"Thankfully Mrs McConnel is in good spirits, if not a little shaken by her ordeal. But what happened is disgraceful and shows how bad things are," he said.
"I'm worried The Grange hospital was built on the assumption that patients would only be there for a few days. The reality couldn't be any different as shown by the lack of bed space and ambulance handover delays.
"This has a knock-on effect because you have ambulances queuing up outside and unable to respond to other emergency calls. It's a vicious circle.
"The long-term solution is to build another site to deal with elective surgery. The short-term solution is to follow the lead of other health boards and use private hospitals to deal with elective surgery so there is more room for patients coming in as emergencies.
"I understand several health boards in Wales are reducing waiting lists by using private providers for elective surgery. Aneurin Bevan University Health Board needs to be willing to do this because we have a growing crisis on our hands at The Grange.
"The blame certainly does not rest with nurses, doctors and paramedics. We are all being let down by those in charge."
Mr Culpin said he believed it was important to highlight incidents like this so "things will improve".
"What we are really after is for someone in senior management at The Grange to be completely aware of Mum's ordeal and to give us an apology, and for all the parties responsible to come together and work very hard to avoid any future patient catastrophes," he added.
Lee Brooks, director of operations at the Welsh Ambulance Service, said hospital handover delays remain a "serious and long-standing issue". He added that February was the service's worst month on record for hours lost at hospitals, with 23,215 hours lost in total.
"As an emergency ambulance service we deliver immediate and life-saving interventions, and when it is needed, take patients promptly to hospital for treatment," he said.
"Being available in the community to respond to people is therefore essential, so it's not helpful when crews spend many, many hours outside emergency departments before their patients are taken into the hospital.
"We lost more than 1,100 hours at hospitals across Wales on Monday, February 28 alone, and Mrs McConnel was among those who waited to be admitted.
"For the Welsh Ambulance Service, this is about getting to the root cause of complex systemic issues in order to resolve them, rather than adapting to a situation so that it becomes the new normal.
"As we hopefully move toward living with Covid, we will continue to work with a range of colleagues to make improvements and effect change, inclusive of the services that we provide."
The Grange University Hospital opened its doors for the first time in November 2020, four months ahead of schedule. It centralised many critical care and specialist services, including A&E, which were previously provided at the Royal Gwent Hospital and Nevill Hall Hospital.
However, it has faced heavy criticism over the past few months and continues to record among the worst A&E waiting times of any acute hospital in Wales. Latest figures for January 2022 show that just over half (57.8%) of patients spent four hours or less in the emergency unit before being admitted, transferred or discharged. These delays have resulted in A&Es becoming overcrowded and led to ambulances being stuck outside unable to offload patients.
Meanwhile, last year a report by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) detailed the "frightening experiences" faced by staff at The Grange. It found that staffing problems were causing "very serious patient safety concerns", with some medics worrying about working in case they lost their licence to practise.
A separate report by the Aneurin Bevan Community Health Council - an NHS watchdog - which visited The Grange's A&E department in August 2021 found that people were sitting on the floor due to a lack of waiting space.
In response to Alex's claims, a spokesman for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board said: "We're very sorry that Mrs McConnell's family were unhappy with the care she received. This is not the standard of care that we aim to provide to our patients.
"We acknowledge that Mrs McConnell's wait for a hospital bed, caused by ongoing pressures on our hospital services, was unacceptable and we have apologised and provided an explanation to the family.
"As in other areas of Wales and the UK, the knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and staff shortages across health and social care prevent the flow of patients through our hospitals which result in long waiting times in our emergency department.
"When patients arrive at the ED they are initially assessed by a nurse and their care is prioritised according to the seriousness of their condition. All patients requiring life-saving treatment are brought straight into our resuscitation department without delay.
"At times when ED staff are caring for people whose lives are in danger, people with less serious conditions may experience longer waits to be seen by a doctor.
"We would like to thank our staff for their hard work in such testing circumstances and to our patients for their understanding at this time.
"In response to the increased demand for our services, the health board is working to rapidly recruit more doctors, nurses and other roles to improve waiting times, patient experience, the flow of patients through our hospital system, and the wellbeing of our staff."
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