Emergency 999 call for seriously ill woman 'should have been code red'
A 999 call for a desperately ill woman from the Ceiriog Valley was not given the priority it should have been, an inquest has been told.
A review by the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust following the death of 51-year-old Elaine Hidden found that the call – the second made by her family – should have been categorised as red, the most urgent.
Instead, a third call was made before paramedics arrived at the family’s home, in Llwynmawr, but efforts to resuscitate her were in vain.
Now an expert independent witness is likely to be called at an inquest to comment on whether Mrs Hidden’s chances of survival would have been greater had the first and second calls been treated more urgently. The review finding of wrong coding related only to the second call.
But at a pre-inquest hearing Joanne Lees, assistant coroner for North Wales East and Central, said that even if it were found that the call had been wrongly coded that would have been an individual error and not a systemic failure.
“The trust accepts that the coding should have been red,” she said.
Concerns
She rejected a request by the Hidden family’s barrister Victoria Roberts for the inquest to be designated an Article 2 inquest in which the state’s responsibility to protect life comes under consideration.
Mrs Lees also turned down a request for a jury to hear the case. She told Mrs Hidden’s husband Colin and other family members: “There is nothing a jury can do that I cannot do, and a jury does not give any reasons for its decisions.”
Mrs Hidden, who had a history of breathing problems, died on February 26, 2018, of aspiration pneumonia, having inhaled food or saliva, and asthma.
But Miss Roberts said the family was concerned about the fact that the post-mortem report by Dr Muhammad Aslam contained no reference to the fact that she had been vomiting and had severe diarrohea in the hours leading to her death. She had apparently had a Chinese meal the previous evening.
Mrs Lees said it was not an omission on Dr Aslam’s part as any possible food poisoning had not played a part in her death.
“My duty is to establish a cause of death and I have been given one,” she said. Another pre-hearing will be held before a date can be fixed for the full inquest.
