 The pensioner had been at the Morfa day unit at Barry Hospital |
An inquiry has been launched into how a 93-year-woman was left at the wrong house by an ambulance crew - despite protesting she did not live there.The elderly woman, who suffers from memory loss, broke both hips when she tried to leave the house and fell.
The woman is normally cared for at home by her daughter, but twice a week she is taken to a nearby hospital to give her family a break.
On this occasion, instead of being taken back to her home in Penarth, near Cardiff, she was taken to a house five miles away in Dinas Powys.
It was alleged that the ambulance crew - who had mistaken her for another patient from the Morfa day unit at Barry Hospital - found a key under a doormat and let the pensioner into the empty house. They left her alone, despite her protests.
They only realised their mistake when the woman's family asked why she had not arrived home.
The family are also furious that the crew did not return immediately to collect her once the blunder was discovered.
Instead, they first dropped off the other patients who were still on the minibus, and did not get back to the woman until an hour and a half later.
 |  Since the accident, she is a frail, totally confused, frightened old lady  |
By the time they had returned for her, she was lying in the garden. She had tried to get out of the house and had fallen over in the garden, breaking both hips.
The woman had surgery following the incident on 20 August. She remains in hospital, where her family say her condition has deteriorated.
Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust have apologised to the family and begun an investigation into the incident.
Left alone
The woman's relatives have seen a solicitor and are considering taking legal action.
Campaigners on behalf of the elderly have suggested ambulance staff should be given "age awareness" training, so that assumptions about mental health are not made on the basis of a patient's age.
The pensioner's daughter, who does not want to be identified, spoke exclusively to BBC Wales about how her mother was left alone by the ambulance crew.
She said: "She was due to return to me from her day centre and for some inexplicable reason they left her in the wrong house, completely alone.
"She must have been frantic.
"When I realised she wasn't on the ambulance, they went back.
"When they got there, my mother had managed to get out of the house and fallen in the garden and broken her femur.
"They dialled 999 and she was taken to hospital - she's still there.
"Since the accident, she is a frail, totally confused, frightened old lady.
"I'm terribly upset to see my mother in the condition she's in.
"It's beyond belief that a trained crew would leave a person with memory loss problems in a house on her own."
'Reviewing procedure'
She added that the family was considering taking legal action against the ambulance service.
A statement issued by Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust and the Welsh Ambulance Services Trust said: "(We) regret the incident and apologise to the patient and family for the distress caused.
"A formal investigation has already been launched and will be finalised shortly.
"Both organisations are reviewing the procedures for the discharge of older patients requiring ambulance transport in light of this incident."
Alun Michael, MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, called for safeguards to be put in place to prevent a repeat of the incident.
He said: "It sounds absolutely horrendous and just the sort of thing that we must guard against for elderly people.
"The Welsh assembly needs to look at what's happened in this case and make sure there are safeguards in place to make sure this can never happen again."
Llio Penry, of Help the Aged Wales, said that generally the transport service provided for elderly people in Wales was very good, but in this case some serious errors had been made - partly because staff had assumed the woman in question had mental health problems.
"It does seem that the ambulance workers made some assumptions about this woman and about her mental health, based on her age," she told BBC Radio Wales.
"Also, they did not go back immediately when they realised the error, and left a very vulnerable woman on her own.
Ms Penry said there appeared to be "gaps in their training", and suggested that their employers might consider arranging age awareness training for them.
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