Mum died during 13-hour wait for an ambulance

When Jean Frickel fell ill, her family called an ambulance so she could get the crucial life-extending help she needed.

But she died before it arrived. She had waited for 13 hours.

The head of Wales' ambulance service said the number of hours lost while crews waited to hand over patients had quadrupled since 2018.

One patient in Wales waited 46 hours and 46 minutes - almost two days - for an ambulance after a fall.

Jean's case is one of 39 across England and Wales over the past two years where coroners have called for changes to the system to prevent these avoidable deaths.

The Welsh government said it had invested more than £180m in improving patient flow and managing people safely in the community.

A coroner ruled Jean's 13-hour wait was because ambulances were queuing to offload patients and unable to answer 999 calls.

Jean's daughter, Helen Underhill, 62, said: "It’s unforgiveable that an ambulance should be waiting outside hospital for someone to be seen, when somebody else is sitting at home, like my mum, in need.

"It’s not the doctors, it’s not the nurses, it’s not the paramedics. It’s getting the ambulances back on the road."

She explained her mum, a former retail worker from Buckley, Flintshire, had suffered increasingly poor health after a heart attack at the age of 52, but it prompted her to live life to the full for the next 20 years.

"I knew that the time my mum had was limited," said Ms Underhill, who lives in Stourport-on-Severn, West Midlands.

"So you grasp at every hour and keep them for as long as you can."

On the night that Jean died, the Welsh Ambulance Service was in the middle of its busiest period to date, but the issue is felt across Wales, as well as England.

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