AN ELDERLY woman with dementia was left for more than 10 hours in a corridor at the Horton General Hospital’s overflowing A&E last week.

Brenda Mountford, who turns 78 this Saturday, was rushed to the Banbury hospital at 10.30pm last Friday night after a fall at home.

Her daughter-in-law Amanda Mountford has recounted the harrowing wait she and her family then endured as Oxfordshire’s hospitals remain on high alert.

Amanda, 50, who kept a diary of events throughout, said: “I called the hospital at half past one, and she was still in an ambulance outside A&E.

“She was freezing cold. The safety bars were crushing her. They had to keep turning the ambulance on for the heating.”

Finally Brenda, who the family suspected had had a stroke and was unable to walk, was transferred to a temporary bed in a corridor at 1.45am.

Amanda said: “The corridors were four-a-side. All the cubicles were full, the waiting room was full.

“We went back on Saturday afternoon at about 1 o’clock and they were just putting her in a cubicle in the Emergency Assessment Unit. She is still there now.”

Since December 19 all sites run by Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have been on the second-highest alert for operational pressures.

It means hospitals are experiencing serious problems with patient flow and handovers from South Central Ambulance Service are ‘significantly compromised’.

Amanda said: “On Friday it was manic. There were three ambulances outside and they all had elderly people in.

“One of the paramedics I was talking to said one pensioner had been waiting in the ambulance since eight o’clock that night.

“It’s just dreadful. We are worried to death. They’ve got no beds and we have snow forecast; how are they possibly going to keep up?”

A growing population, busy and closed GP practices, and under-staffed hospitals have been cited as reasons for sustained pressure across the NHS this winter.

But Amanda, who grew up in Horton View opposite the hospital, said: “I have never known it to be like this.”

OUH Chief Nurse Catherine Stoddart said: “The emergency departments at both the Horton and John Radcliffe Hospitals have been experiencing major pressures and OUH staff are working incredibly hard to ensure patient flow. We would like to remind people across Oxfordshire to stop and consider all the options available to them before deciding to go to an Emergency Department, so that patients with the most urgent needs can be treated more quickly.”