This issue of crews having some information on the patient's condition and possibly being influenced to "push the limits" misses the point. All aviation is a risk v gain decision & SAR / EMS is often at the extremis of those decisions. Higher risks & higher gains. As someone who has done a fair bit of both, I believe that I (we) can only make an informed decision when I have all of the relevant information. I don't need to know every clinical detail anymore than the tasking agency needs to know all of the operational aspects, but without some information I only have half of the equation. What is required though, is the culture of being able to maintain a professional decision making process, regardless of the emotive, "this 2 year old child will die if you don't go" influence. I have made "no-go" decisions and people have perished as I'm sure many here will have had to. I have also made plenty of "go" decisions that have pushed myself and my crew close to the limits & people have been saved.
Accidents will happen & when they do, it is right & proper that we analyse what could have been done better, but we should be doing that anyway. The argument that R118 & R116 shouldn't have been tasked for an injury that may or may not have been life-threatening misses the point. It could be argued that this accident would still have occurred if the mission was to save a boatload of cute children. Let's focus on the cause of this tragic accident and work on ways to mitigate those risks that are inherent in our line of work.
I will say it one last time .... in my opinion, NVD's are a "must" technology for this type of work. Having done plenty with & plenty without, I wouldn't want to go back to doing what the crew of R116 were doing without the aid of NVD.