AN elderly woman with dementia developed Sepsis after waiting 17 hours for an ambulance, despite living less than a mile from her nearest hospital.

Margaret Graham, 85, remains seriously ill with the life-threatening infection after she became unwell at her care home and treatment was delayed.

The Scottish Ambulance Service pledged to launch a full investigation.

The grandmother’s family were told to prepare for the worst when the paramedics arrived just after 3pm on Tuesday. The initial 999 call was made at around 10.20pm the previous night by an on-call doctor, who requested a one-hour transfer to hospital.

Her daughter, Isobel Graham says the family feel let down.

She said:  “I feel as if we don’t have an NHS service any more, we have a Covid service.”

The 53-year-old received a phone call from Gilmoreton Care Home in Edinburgh at 12.45pm on Monday explaining that her mother had developed a fever. The nurse said she had called the 85-year-old’s GP at the Southern Medical Group, which is close by and was waiting for antibiotics.

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Mrs Graham says she heard nothing more until 9.20pm that night when the same nurse called to say she had been chasing the GP practice and the chemist because the prescription had not arrived.

The home then called NHS 24 and were told that an emergency doctor would be dispatched.

Mrs Graham said: “I received a call about 10.15pm from the doctor saying that it looked like Cellulitis (a skin infection)  and that he could either give her a strong dose of oral antibiotics but she might not make it or she could go to hospital and get intravenous antibiotics.”

After giving her consent, the GP requested a one-hour transfer to the Western General hospital saying it might be quieter than Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, although that hospital is only two-minutes away by car.

At 8am the next morning she called the hospital and was told her mother was “still expected”. 

She says the care home were told that the ambulance service had been experiencing high demand.

Mrs Graham was unable to take her mother to hospital herself because she is unable to walk as a result of suffering a stroke and requires a hoist.

At 10am, the 85-year-old was still waiting and her daughter was told she could visit her.

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She said:”Mum was in pain, she was crying out. She hadn’t been treated and she had been in agony all night.

“When they turned up they said they were just going to take her to the Infirmary because it was two minutes away. 

“It was 30-hour wait for antibiotics and it was 3pm before the ambulance arrived.”

She claims her sister, who accompanied their mother in the ambulance, was told by a doctor that the ambulance delay was due to her mother’s age.

“[He said]it may be wrong but it’s ageism, if someone has dementia, stroke etc like Mum, they are low priority.”

Mrs Graham sent the Herald a picture of ambulances lined up outside Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, in the time that her mother was waiting.

She says she was also later told that her mother should have been offered the hospital at home service by the on-call doctor, where frail older adults receive acute care without the need for ward admission.

She has also demanded answers from the GP practice as to why the prescription did not reach the pharmacy.

“Obviously something has gone wrong, where they have written a prescription and for whatever reason it did not reach mum.

“I feel the absolute route of the problem is the Scottish Government, for both the GP issue and the ambulance, they are receiving their orders from higher up.

“If things were as they morally should be, a GP would visit mum in her care home as part of his/her routine and there would not be ambulances lined up whilst my Mum had to wait 17 hrs.

“Seeing and experiencing what I have in care homes in the last year and a half, they have so much to answer to but never seem to be accountable for any of it.

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“I’d like to know what the priority was over my Mum in that 17-hour period that they didn’t have 30 mins to collect her.

The 85-year-old is now receiving the hospital at home service at her care home but remains seriously ill.

Her daughter added: “We are still being told that they don’t know if she will pull through.”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: “We are sorry to hear that the care and attention delivered was not what we would expect and welcome that the circumstances are being investigated."

Scottish Labour’s Health spokesperson Jackie Baillie said “This is a deeply worrying case which highlights the wider risk Covid poses to our NHS.  

“There needs to be a thorough review of what went wrong here and more importantly why it went wrong.

“Mrs Graham’s experience speaks to a system under pressure.

“We need to learn from cases like these so we can make sure no-one else has to experience the unnecessary distress that Mrs Graham and her family have faced.”

In a statement the Scottish Ambulance Service said: ““We are sincerely sorry for the delay which occurred during a period of exceptionally high demand. 

“This call was initially a GP request for an ambulance but was later upgraded. We will be investigating this case thoroughly and will contact the patient directly to apologise and discuss our findings.”