Any police helicopter in the UK CAN do Casevacs. In essence, these are flights where "it is judged" that but for the use of the helicopter, the casualty would be fairly likely to die. Its all in the PAOM. This can include night Casevac, where they land ad hoc rural. Police heles do not carry a paramedic.
In practice, some units do quite a lot of Casevac, others none or virtually none. Partly disposition, partly to do with their patches. There are interestingly different interpretations of what Casevac means in practice. I am not sure how (paramedically) untrained police crews are supposed to be able to judge the state of a casualty that they have not seen............ In practice they don't of course.
SOME UK police helicopters have a HEMS approval. This allows them to do HEMS (no surpirses there). A paramedic is part of the crew. At the last count, there were 3: Sussex, Wilts and N Wales. Some police helicopters with a HEMS approval can ask for permission to do night HEMS. Of the 3 above, Sussex and Wilts have that approval. N Wales do not. This is essentially because of the terrain in N Wales and the (lack of) ambient lighting in most of their patch.
SASless, remember we operate in a parallel universe over here.
IMHO, it will be many years before there is night HEMS (non-police) in the UK. The CAA will be VERY cautious about it. Just think how long it took them to allow NVG above 500 ft for police work........ In the liability-obsessed world in which we live, the guy who agrees to allow night HEMS for air ambos will feel very exposed. I am not agreeing with such an attitude - just recognising it for what it is.
If you believe the politicans fiddling with our health service, there will be more urgent scope for hospital to hospital transfer. The "plan" in the UK is to move to far fewer A&Es and have a relatively small number of super-trauma centres. Flight transfers between lits surveyed sites are even permitted in the UK. All we need to do is to get the hospitals to convert some of their car parks back to helipads.
Last edited by Helinut; 1st Apr 2008 at 19:15.