A WOMAN who suffered a stroke and waited more than 15 hours for an ambulance was “let down”, an inquest was told.

Of the death of Diane Greenslade, 71, senior coroner for Gwent Wendy James said that had emergency services reached her earlier, the outcome “could have been different”.

Mrs Greenslade had a stroke on the evening of January 5 at her ground floor flat in The Reddings, Chepstow. A neighbour activated her flat alarm and at 10.36pm an operator from alarm monitoring company Careline called, but only heard moans.

They tried unsuccessfully to contact Mrs Greenslade’s daughter Karen Jones, then dialled 999 for an ambulance. The call was categorised ‘green’, or not serious, later upgraded to amber.

Next morning, Mrs Jones tried unsuccessfully to contact her mother and rang the neighbour, who told her she raised the alarm hours before.

At 11am, Mrs Jones and her husband found Mrs Greenslade on the floor with a chest of drawers on top of her. Mrs Jones made three calls to find out where the ambulance was.

A rapid response vehicle arrived at 2.05pm, 15-and-a-halfhours after the first 999 call. Its driver, paramedic Simon Mullins, said it was being used for amber and red calls. He was at Chepstow Ambulance Station, some eight minutes from The Reddings. An ambulance arrived at 2.38pm.

Mrs Greenslade soon suffered a cardiac arrest and later died at the Royal Gwent Hospital.

“The rapid resource unit in Chepstow was only minutes away. It is difficult to comprehend why this resource was not allocated to this incident sooner,” said Ms James.

“I am deeply troubled by the evidence. [It] is unacceptable.”

She said consideration should have been given to upgrade Diane’s case to amber after the failure to contact her or her family.

“If they had done so, the outcome may have been very difficult.

Diane and her family have been let down,” said Ms James.

An ambulance service report showed extremely high demand on January 5-6. A Careline manager said policies and procedures were “correctly” followed.

Conclusion: Died of natural causes following a delay in medical intervention due to a 15-anda-half-hour delay in the ambulance service responding to the emergency call.