Grandma forced to wait more than two hours for ambulance on Adelaide CBD pokie room floor

An 81-year-old grandma who fell in a CBD hotel had to wait more than two hours for an ambulance, with the hotel owner calling 000 three times.

An elderly grandmother was forced to wait more than two hours for an ambulance on the floor of a CBD gaming room after injuring herself in a fall.

Ambulance crews were first called to the King William Hotel (formerly Ambassadors) at 12:10pm on Wednesday after owner Darren Brown, 38, was alerted to the woman’s injury by “wailing” from the gaming room.

He said he found the 81-year-old woman on the floor beside her chair.

“She’s misstepped and taken a tumble off the chair, and she’s obviously tried to protect herself from the fall and extended her arm, so she hurt her shoulder real badly,” Mr Brown said.

The woman complained of shortness of breath, dizziness and sweating in addition to her shoulder pain, and was unable to get up.

The 81-year-old woman nursing her injuries on the floor of the Ambassadors Hotel gaming room. Picture: Supplied

“With those symptoms it could have been a cardiac arrest, so I called triple-0,” he said.

“I presumably thought an 81-year-old woman with a fair bit of pain and dizziness would be categorised as an emergency.

“The fella on the line wanted the correct spelling of her first name, and I was obviously more concerned about her and not silly questions about spelling her name.”

Having propped the woman against a machine on the advice of the emergency operator, who instructed him not to move her, Mr Brown made another call at 12:33pm and was told an ambulance would arrive soon.

Meanwhile, Mr Brown said the woman “calmed down a lot and was talking to us, but was still in a lot of pain”.

More than an hour elapsed with no response, and Mr Brown finally called triple-0 a third time at 1:53pm.

He said the “apologetic” operator told him until that point, it was not classified as an emergency call-out in the system but would be upgraded.

“I just couldn’t believe it, we’re about five minutes from the hospital,” Mr Brown said.

“The person said we’ve identified your call and help is on the way – you don’t know what the pressures on the system are, so you don’t want to get upset at the person on the line just doing their job.

“I’ve never had an instance in 20 years in this industry where I’ve had to wait that long for an ambulance, and those previous instances, in my view, were nowhere near as serious as this emergency.

“A lot of it was about her dignity, that she’s just been told to sit on the floor of the gaming room.”

Ambulance crews arrived at 2:15pm and took the woman to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The woman could not be contacted for comment and her condition is unknown.

A spokeswoman from SA Ambulance Service said the incident was initially classed as a Priority 3 “non-lights and sirens response, which upon reviewing the information provided, was appropriate”.

“After further information was obtained, the incident was upgraded to a Priority 2, which has a target response time of 16 minutes,” the spokeswoman said.

“An ambulance responded to the patient within 19 minutes from that point.

“SAAS recognises that the response wasn’t within the response time we would like to have achieved.”

She also confirmed the Optus outage had no effect on response times.

According to data provided by the state government in July, ambulance response times have generally improved, with paramedics reaching priority one cases 67.3 per cent within the recommended eight minutes this winter, compared with 52.2 per cent in the same period last year.

Priority two ambulance call-outs reached 57.7 per cent of cases within the recommended 16 minutes, compared with only 36.7 per cent last winter.