Ambulance driver lifts lid on the woman who cost NHS £400k in over 1,000 false alarms and other selfish callers who waste overstretched medics’ time with tragic results
Pensioner Richard Hansbury and student Lisa Day are just two of the innocent victims who died whilst waiting hours for ambulances, as Kit Wharton reveals epidemic of time-wasters and hoaxers paramedics deal with
A FRUSTRATED ambulance driver has lifted the lid on the shocking epidemic of 999 time-wasters and hoaxers who put real patients’ lives at risk.
Fed-up Kit Wharton has revealed that one woman alone has cost the NHS £400,000 by calling out the service on false alarms 1,000 times.
He also claims the endless paperwork that has to be completed by drivers is leaving the service desperately overstretched.
Kit, 51, has written a book about his experiences since becoming a driver in 2003 — and how the service has declined in that time.
Patients are now known to wait up to four hours for an ambulance and ten hours at A&E.
The married father of two writes: “One of the problems, or tragedies, about the modern NHS is that the wartime generation that defeated Hitler, never complained and never called an ambulance because they didn’t want to make a fuss, is dying out.
“It is being replaced by today’s me-generation — products of the welfare state from cradle to grave, who call an ambulance at the drop of a hat.”
Then there is the growing number of mentally ill people who do not receive the correct treatment — and for whom calling out ambulances can become an obsession.
Sometimes these false call-outs do not just slow service for the critically ill or injured, they also put lives on the road at risk as crews race to a scene.
Kit, still a serving driver, recalls one call that he says put three lives in danger, when a woman in her thirties was reported to be on the ground covered in blood in the middle of a housing estate.
He writes: “Jobs like this you go like, ‘F***. Drive it like you stole it’. Which is what I proceed to do.”
During the eight-mile journey Kit says he nearly killed “at least one person” and that another crew rushing to the same job nearly killed TWO.
When they all finally screeched into the estate, there was nobody there.
Kit writes: “The caller’s a local who does it all the time.”
And he says of the treatment of the mentally ill: “It’s not something the NHS handles well because it’s so complicated and time- consuming.”
More aggravating are the people who happily abuse the system with multiple call-outs — dubbed “frequent flyers” by fuming drivers.
Kit reveals: “Probably the most astonishing fact about the service is the degree to which it’s abused by them.”
LAST month it emerged that a pensioner had bled to death after it took paramedics two-and-a-half hours to get him to hospital.
Richard Hansbury, 65, hit his head in a fall and despite a Code Red dispatch – meaning he should have received help in less than eight minutes – it took crews more than an hour to reach him in Wigan last October.
They then needed to call in another crew to help transport 19st Mr Hansbury to hospital. But none was available and it was a further hour and 42 minutes before he arrived at hospital. He later died due to severe blood loss. His sister Rosaline Fox, 66, said she was “absolutely appalled”.
Student nurse Lisa Day was 27 when she died after waiting almost five hours for an ambulance to turn up in 2015.
A coroner ruled the diabetic Londoner – who was vomiting blood – could have been saved if she had got to hospital sooner.
Her brother-in-law, Matthew Edwards, blamed the “under-resourcing of the ambulance service in London”.
These time-wasters even know what medical and emergency- service buzzwords to use in order to get attention.
Every time, Kit and his fellow drivers have to race to their aid.
Kit, who has not revealed which NHS trust he works for, explains: “Even if they’ve called hundreds of times before, this might be the one time they’re genuine.
“Each area has what is called its ‘regulars’ (like a pub), who sometimes call every day.
“One elderly lady in our area had a total of something like £400,000- worth of ambulance visits over a few years.
“At anything up to £400 a call-out, that means she’s called an ambulance over a thousand times. And we still go to her.”
He calls one drunk, Dave, the “Elvis of the frequent flyers — a right royal pain in the a***”.
He once called 999 four times in one day complaining of chest pains.
Another of Kit’s regulars is a 25st woman who needs carers to help her move from her chair to her bed and back each day.
He says: “Her life is watching the telly.”
One time he was called because she had difficulty breathing.
When she was hoisted from her chair her bottom had become “completely square, moulded by the seat.”
The driver also reveals that the special ambulances brought in to cope with obese patients are dubbed “fat trucks” by crews.
He adds: “The stretcher on it — especially big — is called the Megasus. It’s written underneath it in large letters, which probably doesn’t make the patients feel any better.”
One call Kit believed was a waste of time was from a man who dialled 999 when he picked a spot on his leg and it started bleeding.
It turned out to be a life- threatening nick in the artery. Kit writes of arriving at the scene: “There must be literally pints of blood all over the floor, and he’s in shock.
“Basically there isn’t enough blood left in his body for his heart to pump it up to his brain and keep him conscious if he sits or stands up.”
The man needed an emergency blood transfusion but his elderly wife still apologised to the crew for calling them out.
Such thoughtfulness is very rare, and the growing numbers of time-wasters and hoaxers — as well as more and more paperwork — have changed the whole way Kit works.
When he joined the service in 2003, ambulance crews washed their vehicles, kitted them out, cleaned the station and had time to sit down and have a meal together.
Kit reveals: “Nowadays we’re so busy that teams of people do all that for us.
“We collect our ambulances at the start of the shift and we’re off out and might not see the station again until 12 or 13 hours later.”
In his book Kit also recounts many of the horror stories of the job — from the abuse he has received from confused dementia sufferers to some truly sickening sights.
Such as the time he attended a child whose face had been bitten by a dog.
He says: “The nasty ones are the ones you’d rather forget.”
After handing over patients at the hospital Kit then leaves. He says: “We rarely find out what happens to people in the long term. But with some jobs you know they’ll be scarred for life. Physically or mentally - if they survive at all.”
Humour is what helps him survive all the stresses and strains.
He says: “In the service you deal with death and tragedy, injury and illness, misery and loss.
“And if you can’t laugh about that lot, what the hell can you laugh about?”
One call-out was a man who had injured his private parts during sex.
He told Kit he had heard his manhood “snap”.
It sounded funny until Kit saw the extent of the injury. Then, full of sympathy, he rushed the man to hospital as fast as possible.
He writes: “I’ve never seen so many people in the resus (resuscitation) department.
“The news must have spread like wildfire. What the man’s done is unusual, and doctors love to see things like this.”
Another memorable case was when Kit was called out to help a female lorry driver who had been knocked down.
He arrived to find several middle-aged couples watching over her, despite the site being in the middle of nowhere.
He says: “Turns out this is famous as a dogging site.
“Our hapless lorry driver has wandered past the wrong car, no doubt perfectly innocently.
"The couple inside definitely didn’t want to be watched at whatever they were doing, and took off out of the car park like a scalded cat, running her down in the process.”
Yet another call was a woman who had fainted in an “art gallery”.
It turned out to be a fetish club and she had passed out after too much activity on a pommel horse.
He writes: “This is an S&M club. Sadomasochism.
“Our patient is the ‘victim’ (presumably willingly), tied to the pommel horse somehow and thrashed with God knows what while everyone else looks on sipping their drinks politely. Nice.
"Not my cup of tea and very strange, but we’re far too polite to comment. Takes all sorts.”
Additional reporting: DOUG WIGHT
- Emergency Admissions: Memoirs Of An Ambulance Driver, by Kit Wharton, is published by Fourth Estate on February 9, priced £9.99.