The HSE has said that they were experiencing a very high demand for 999 services for patients, with immediately life-threatening conditions, last Tuesday, when a woman in Gurranabraher was waiting nearly 3 hours for an ambulance.
Responding to a request for information by RedFM News, the HSE said that 999 calls are clinically prioritised to ensure that patients with life threatening conditions receive the fastest response possible.
The Executive said that Tuesday's period of high demand meant that patients with non-life threatening conditions had longer waits.
The HSE also told RedFM News that they don't comment on individual cases but do encourage non-life threatening or clinically serious calls to consider other options such as GPs and Minor Injury Units.
Speaking to RedFM News, Cork North-Central TD, Thomas Gould who first raised Tuesday's incident, said that there is an issue with the Ambulance Service co-ordinators not being familiar with Cork:
"Their GP told them that she needed to go by ambulance, in case she got sick in transport, that would have to be an ambulance that she would go in. Otherwise her son would have driven her himself. This lady, who was sick, was in Gurranabraher. It was a five minute taxi spin to the Mercy Hospital or maybe 15 minutes to the CUH. Like if you had the person who was coordinating the ambulances in Cork, they would know the logistics and the lay-out of the the areas and how far people are from different hospitals."
