Patrick Smale says his father should have gotten care sooner last weekend. (CBC)

An 83-year-old woman with a cane and a heart condition was told to bring her husband into a Nova Scotia hospital on her own while he had a heart attack in the parking lot of the building, the couple's son said Friday.

Patrick Smale said his 81-year-old father, Herbert Smale, began having chest pains last Saturday and drove to the patient drop-off zone at Soldiers Memorial Hospital in Middleton.

Smale said his mother was with his father and went into the hospital to get help because her husband was in too much pain to walk on his own. Inside the building, a hospital staff member told the elderly woman to bring her husband in on her own, said Patrick Smale.

"She's 83, she's had a couple of open-heart surgeries. She's pretty frail," he said. "She couldn't lift him. She said, 'I can't.' And she walks with a cane too, so it was sort of maybe a dumb suggestion."

Smale said his parents recounted what the hospital staff told them: "'We can't go out to help. We can call 911 and have the ambulance crew, the paramedics come and bring him in, but you'll have to pay for it.'"

10 metres from hospital

Smale said although his father was about 10 metres from the hospital doors, paramedics were called from their base across the street from the hospital. After a few minutes, paramedics arrived to help Herbert Smale out of his car and into the emergency department.

"I don't even know if they bothered with lights and sirens to cross the street," his son told CBC News on Friday. "Luckily, everything jived that we got him in OK but ... the stupidity of it all. It's just crazy."

The Smales did not need to pay an ambulance bill because Herbert Smale was never transported in the vehicle.

Tim Guest, vice-president of acute care for Annapolis Valley Health, said officials were investigating the incident and reminding their staff members of the hospital's procedures.

"If someone drives up to the facility needing emergent care and isn't able to enter the building on their own, our process is for a nurse to go out and assess them and if their condition is life-threatening, it's to do whatever they can to help them to get into the building for care," he said.

Smale said no one came out from the hospital to check on his father.

Guest said he could not comment specifically on the case because the hospital had not yet heard from the family. Patrick Smale said he is too upset at the moment to call them.

Smale said his father did not suffer serious heart damage from the delay, but that the outcome may have been different if an ambulance had not been across the street when his parents arrived at the hospital.

"If they don't pick up somebody right away, somebody could die, actually, out there."