AN elderly man bled to death after waiting 25 minutes for an ambulance.

Sussex Ambulance Service NHS Trust could be forced to pay out thousands of pounds in compensation following two complaints by the patient's son.

The pensioner suffered an internal haemorrhage but due to ambulance service staffing difficulties and other call-outs it took far longer than the national target of eight minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

By the time it got there, the patient had died.

The Health Service Ombudsman upheld both complaints, which concerned the length of time it took for an ambulance crew to arrive and how the son's original complaint about the incident was handled by the trust.

The son, referred to as Mr W in the ombudsman's report, said an ambulance was called to attend his father in a rural area of East Sussex on August 7, 1999.

Mr W asked the trust for an independent review into the incident on December 7 but the trust's convener, Rosie Lewis, who dealt with complaints, refused a review on April 25 last year.

The ombudsman found the staff at the ambulance service communication centre had done all they reasonably could in response to the emergency call.

The call was classified as urgent but, due to staffing difficulties and other call-outs, no ambulance was available to attend from the two closest bases.

As a result, it took an ambulance 25 minutes to reach Mr W's father, exceeding both the national targets of eight minutes for 75 per cent of calls and 19 minutes for 95 per cent of rural calls.

The report said: "Notwithstanding the factors that affected the deployment of ambulances, the ombudsman considered it to be a matter of concern it took 25 minutes to respond to an urgent call when there were no extraordinary demands on the trust's services.

"The ombudsman also upheld the complaint about complaint handling, finding that delays in dealing with Mr W's complaint had been largely due to the personal circumstances of the convener and that the convener failed to examine all of the relevant documents."

Since the incident, the trust has introduced a fast response unit of motorcycle and car-based paramedics.

A helicopter is also available and ambulance officers all have pagers to allow them to respond to emergency calls in their own cars if necessary.

The trust has also made changes to its complaints monitoring system and a new convener has been appointed. Mrs Lewis no longer works at the trust.

At the time of the incident, the service was struggling to cope with a surge in 999 calls and 43 per cent of crews were reaching emergency cases within eight minutes.

Trust chief executive David Griffiths said the case of Mr W's father was unfortunate but everything had been done in the trust's power to get to the patient as quickly as possible.

He said crews had answered more than 5,000 emergency calls in 1999 and 95.5 per cent of them were reached within the standard 19 minutes demanded for a rural area.

He said: "In between four and five per cent of these cases, we took longer and this was one of those cases.

"There are occasions when, despite every effort, it can take longer than normal to get to someone.

"The ombudsman report is not recommending improvements we should make. He accepted we had done everything we could and was recording his concern about the length of time it took.

"It is difficult to say what would have happened with the patient if we had got there within 19 minutes."

The trust has received more than £800,000 of Government funding in the last two years and its response times are improving.

Crews now reach emergency cases within eight minutes 70 per cent of the time.

Unison spokesman Colin Rhodes said that no matter how many new recruits were brought in, it would always be difficult for crews to keep up with the increase in 999 calls.

He said: "There will always be situations where demand will outstrip supply no matter how many resources you put in."