Woman died in Sheffield hospital after near five-hour wait for ambulance

Hannah Berry, the assistant coroner for the coroner area of South Yorkshire West, opened the inquest into the death of Sophie Hindmarsh on September 18 in 2023 and concluded it in April 2024.

Ms Berry said that Ms Hindmarsh had had complex needs and required full-time care and tragically died in hospital weeks after waiting for more than four hours for an ambulance, with paramedics held up in queues outside hospital.

She has now raised the alarm, filing a prevention of future deaths report calling on the government and NHS to take action.

The recently published report said: “At 2.45am on July 21, 2022, Sophie’s father called 999 as she was vomiting brown liquid, felt hot to touch and her percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy feeding tube was leaking.

“The call was initially coded as a Category 1, but at 2.51am was correctly recorded as a category 2 by the senior clinical advisor.

“An ambulance was dispatched at 7.16am arriving at 7.31am. Within that 24-hour period, 156 ambulance hours were lost to delays handing over patients to hospitals.”

More than 10,000 people already get the Yorkshire Post newsletter - join them here

The report added Sophie had been taken to Northern General Hospital in Sheffield where she had sadly died on August 17.

During the inquest, the coroner Ms Berry had expressed her concerns about the procedure and said there was a “risk” of future deaths if action was not taken.

Her main concern was that the ambulance service was called at 2.45am but an actual ambulance arrived four hours and 46 minutes later to Ms Hindmarsh’s address – far longer than the 40-minute target.

The coroner said: “There was a significant delay in offloading patients at hospitals which tied up ambulance resources on that day and meant they were unable to respond to emergency calls.”

The Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and The West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board must respond to the coroner and give details of action to prevent future deaths, or explain why no action is proposed.

Ms Berry has also sent a copy of the report to Yorkshire Ambulance Service and Ms Hindmarsh’s family, among others.

The conclusion of the inquest was natural causes.