Some ambulances have been forced to wait outside The Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for 18 hours, an inquest heard (Picture: Alamy)

A man died after suffering a stroke on holiday because he had to wait for two-and-a-half hours to get medical help.

Tony Reedman, 54, fell ill while staying in Cornwall with his wife and should have been reached by an ambulance within 18 minutes.

In a damning inquest conclusion, a coroner has ruled he might have survived if it wasn’t for delays in the NHS emergency service. 

Mr Reedman, from Norfolk, died four days after being taken from a Truro vacation cottage to the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

He began to experience stroke symptoms on June 26 and underwent surgery but succumbed to a cerebrovascular infarction, a blockage of blood flow in the brain.

Guy Davies, assistant coroner for Cornwall, said the delay in the ambulance reaching Mr Reedman directly led to the delay in treatment starting at hospital, which could have saved his life.

He told Cornwall Coroner’s Court: ‘I find that the delay between the 999 call and Tony being taken to hospital significantly reduced his chances of surviving the blood clot.

‘The average stroke patient has a one in three chance of a positive outcome following treatment by thrombolysis in the first hour following a stroke.

An inquest found the hospital is struggling to discharge patients because of the lack of social care provision (Picture: SWNS)

‘This is reduced down to one in 30 after four-and-a-half hours. Tony’s stroke was more serious than the average.

‘I find on the evidence it is not possible to definitively determine whether Tony would have survived if he had arrived at a hospital earlier and been treated earlier.’

One doctor told the inquest: ‘It is a postcode lottery, and it is better to be in Bristol on a Saturday night than in Cornwall if you have a stroke because the services are not available here.’

Mr Davies said ‘bed blocking’ in hospitals due to a lack of capacity in the social care sector had left ambulances queuing outside hospitals in Cornwall.

With nowhere to go for elderly or chronically ill patients, hospitals are ‘unable to discharge patients no longer needing hospital treatment due to the unavailability of social care beds or social care packages’.

He said some ambulances have had to wait fo 18 hours, adding: ‘Those ambulance delays give rise to a concern that circumstances creating a further risk of deaths will occur or will continue to exist in the future.

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‘In my opinion action should be taken to prevent or reduce those circumstances happening again of a risk of death created by them.’

Andrew Cox, the region’s senior coroner, has written to the health secretary with his concerns about the problems.

Pointing to other recent inquests, he said: ‘In all of these deaths concerns have arisen regarding ambulance delays in Cornwall, which have in some cases significantly diminished patients’ prospects of survival.

‘Tony’s death has been amongst those that has been referred to the secretary of state for action to be taken to reduce the risk of future deaths.

‘I find that the delay in treatment for Tony was a direct consequence of ambulance delay.

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Tony Reedman, 54, wait two-and-a-half for an ambulance when he should have been seen to in 18 minutes.