Elderly woman died after driving herself to A&E at Eastbourne hospital

Jean was told she faced an eight-hour wait for an ambulance

Author: Ryan BurrowsPublished 9th Mar 2023

Sussex's ambulance service has apologised after a woman died outside Eastbourne's District General Hospital after being told she faced an eight-hour wait for an ambulance.

The woman, identified as Jean, drove herself to the hospital's accident and emergency department and even paid for parking before collapsing outside A&E.

Her story was raised in the House of Commons by the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday (May 9th).

Mr Davey said:

"No-one should lose their mother or grandmother in this way.

"So would the Prime Minister apologise to Jean's family, and to all those who've lost loved ones due to the Government's appalling ambulance delays?"

Rishi Sunak responded by saying that his 'thoughts were with' Jean and her family.

He added:

"It's absolutely right that we continue to make progress on improving the performance in urgent emergency care.

We outlined plans to do this just the other month and I'm pleased to say that we are seeing performances improve, whether it's in waits in A&E or ambulance performance times, a marked improvement over the last several weeks over the peak pressures we saw over winter due to Covid cases and flu."

A spokesman for South East Coast Ambulance Service said:

"Our thoughts are with this patient's family and we would invite them or a representative to contact us so we can look further into the circumstances.

"We are working hard to respond to everyone who needs us as quickly as possible, prioritising those in a life-threatening condition, and recognise the need to improve our response times."

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