Auckland Man Dies After Ambulance Delay, Coroner Expresses Concern Over 'Serious, Compounding Mistakes'

A tragic incident in Auckland has raised serious concerns about the efficiency and responsiveness of emergency services. Wenyi Chen, a 72-year-old man, died after a significant delay in the arrival of an ambulance following a fall from a driveway. The coroner has expressed deep concern over the "serious, compounding mistakes" made in handling the emergency calls.

Chen fell off the side of a driveway during a rainy night in October 2022 while leaving a friend's house. He sustained a severe spinal injury and became unresponsive. Despite the valiant efforts of family and friends to perform CPR, the 45-minute delay in ambulance response proved fatal.

Emergency services received the first 111 call at 7:39 PM, but the ambulance was reassigned to a higher-priority event just two minutes later. A second ambulance was dispatched but also reassigned. By 8:15 PM, a fifth emergency call was made, at which point Chen was unconscious and not breathing. The call was re-triaged as a "cardiac/respiratory arrest" and given a purple priority, the highest level of urgency.

Coroner Janet Anderson noted that accurate triaging and assessment of emergency calls are essential components of a safe ambulance service. In this case, she concluded that the service failed to meet these standards, stating, "Wenyi and his family were let down by the emergency service."

St John, the emergency service provider, has acknowledged the errors in its operating procedures and triaging that night. Damian Tomic, the deputy chief executive of clinical services, expressed the organization's unreserved apology for the distress caused to Chen's family. He also mentioned that St John is working through the coroner's recommendations to improve its emergency call taker policies and processes.

This incident is not an isolated case. In the past five years, St John has received over 3.1 million calls and responded to 2.1 million. However, the number of annual complaints about the service has nearly doubled from 26 in 2019-20 to 49 in 2023-24. Other cases, such as the death of Tayla Brown in 2020 due to a 28-minute wait for an ambulance, highlight a pattern of systemic issues.

The coroner's findings emphasize the need for a thorough review of emergency call taker policies and training. The focus is on ensuring the highest possible standard of care and communication at every point of contact. As the community grapples with these revelations, the hope is that such tragedies will lead to meaningful reforms in emergency services to prevent future preventable deaths.