interesting choice
I take it that if SM was injured somewhere he would choose to have a $20 milliion dollar aircraft sitting far away and not responding rather than a 206 sitting at the scene of his accident with a competent crew ready to transport him to a higher level of care.
As for my current program, we launch on standby. We launch having no idea how the patient will pay for the service. We do not discriminate our services based on the patients ability to pay but rather on their urgent need for the highest level of professional care. We do all of this in an EC145 or an A-Star or whatever the aircraft is that is closest to the need. If our competition is closer, they get the call. I don't think a patient lying at the side of the road has ever said he would rather wait for a BK.
The CEO of the company gets paid very well but he also manages over 400 helicopters and airplanes and the crews and staff to keep the organization running as smoothly as possible. All of this across the entire country. The task of maintaining the aircraft, training the crews, dealing with the FAA etc. would be overwhelming to most people. I am certain that his pay per paitient served is vastly lower than that paid to a government program administrator.
Government run programs are fraught with waste. The article on Ornge is very telling about the incredible amount of waste in the system and then the problems of dealing with the waste. A 139 to do what an AStar could easily do? Yeah, then you start to hear screaming about the waste of money over launching on standby. The care of the patient is beng dictated by the cost of the response. What is the blade hour cost of a 139 compared to an AStar? $10,000 per hour compared to $1500? A government run program like this one is best described in the old adage, "What is the definition of an elephant? A mouse built to government specifications".
So in the final analysis, how is the patient better served? When you are the patient, what would you rather have, a helicopter enroute or some bureaucrat calculating the cost of the launch and deciding you are not worth it?
Cheers and Merry Chirstmas