Fred Pring died at home after waiting for 42 minutes for an ambulance, according to reports. The 74-year-old, who had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, waited for over 42 minutes for an ambulance, despite a fully staffed and fully operational ambulance service in the area on that particular day.
Despite seven ambulances and a rapid response vehicle covering the area on that day in March 2013, Mr Pring died at home while waiting for emergency response when one ambulance waited outside Wrexham Maelor Hospital for nearly five hours when trying to drop off a patient, while a different ambulance had been at the same hospital for over 90 minutes.
Mr Pring’s case had been assessed as a ‘red two’ call which is less of a priority than ‘red one’ which is seen as life threatening. However, in this instance it really didn’t matter about the category that Mr Pring had been assigned to as the ambulance was significantly longer than the target eight minute arrival time for either classification.
A pathologist, from the Home Office, said that it would be hard to answer the question of whether Mr Pring would have survived if an ambulance had arrived sooner; however, Mr Pring’s cardiologist said, during Thursday’s hearing into his death, that had an ambulance arrived after the first emergency call, he would have survived.
