An elderly man has died after he was forced to wait four hours for an ambulance in Melbourne’s west, during what the paramedics’ union has described as a critical shortage.

Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said the 69-year-old Surrey Hills man could be heard yelling for help inside his home about 2am Saturday after a fall. The union boss told the media the man’s neighbors called for an ambulance, but due to stretched resources no crews arrived at the home until about 6am.

Mr Hill said the death was “incredibly sad” and devastating for the man’s family, as well as the call and paramedics who want to be able to help patients.

“But with resources so stretched, the workload being what it is, it’s just become impossible,” he told the Herald Sun.

“You can never predict what would have happened had paramedics gotten there sooner.

“But, by all accounts he was calling out, so you expect that the situation may have been much different had we got to the gentleman on time.”

Mr Hill said 50 ambulance crews were offline, or “dropped”, on Saturday night due to a high number of paramedics being on sick leave.

The result was just 90 of the normal 120 crews were working the night shift across the state of Victoria that evening.

In a statement, Ambulance Victoria told Nine papers that case was being reviewed and that the man’s death would be referred to the coroner.

“Our deepest sympathies are with the patient’s family members at this very sad time,” the agency said.

“We would like to thank the community members who alerted triple-0.”

Ambulance Victoria went on to state that the health system was extremely busy due to seasonal illness.

“We have as many crews on the road as possible and our priority will always be responding to the sickest and most time-critical patients,” it said.

“We use a dynamic operating model that relocates resources as necessary to minimise rostering impacts.”