Greater Yorkshire Police... 3 helicopters..?
It's so clear when you know how!!!
Casevac is a POLICE ROLE. It should be treated under the same auspices as a pursuit or a misper etc. In that the rules and regs are fully embedded in the PAOM I.
It was/is designed purely to swoop and scoop a downed police officer and transfer to a medical facility - endex.
It Is a means of responding to a life threatening tasking WITHOUT PLANNING FOR IT.
ALL police helicopters have this capability built in (or should I say all police crews?).
CASEVAC is day and night capable.
CASEVAC must NOT allow for commercial financial gain. That is to say that the police cannot charge an external agency for the occasion. To do this would require an AOC.
CASEVAC should be used only after ALL OTHER MEANS OF RAPID TRANSPORT
HAVE BEEN EXHAUSTED. This is because there are commercial companies out there trying to earn a buck doing this for a living and they dont want public money stealing the show.
A HEMS flight requires intent. Intent to commit an emergency medical response. Be it operational and/or financial.
You either intend to man your a/c with a full time paramedic, or
Plan to pick one up en route, or
collect one at scene, or
charge the ambulance authority for your services.
Your intent signals your desire to operate outside the PAOC. Thus the need for an approval. This is not guaranteed. The CAA have to vet your operation and it is themselves who will decide whether you deserve a HEMS Approval (police).
When operating under HEMS you operate under JAR OPs 3.005(d)Annex.
There are no insurance complications.
There are restrictions - the main being no night HEMS unless you either operate twin pilot OR, the terrain you operate over allows the CAA to grant you approval for night ops with a suitably qualified HEMS crew member. In the UK I believe only Wilts have this exemption?
Certainly keeps the pilots honed
Casevac is a POLICE ROLE. It should be treated under the same auspices as a pursuit or a misper etc. In that the rules and regs are fully embedded in the PAOM I.
It was/is designed purely to swoop and scoop a downed police officer and transfer to a medical facility - endex.
It Is a means of responding to a life threatening tasking WITHOUT PLANNING FOR IT.
ALL police helicopters have this capability built in (or should I say all police crews?).
CASEVAC is day and night capable.
CASEVAC must NOT allow for commercial financial gain. That is to say that the police cannot charge an external agency for the occasion. To do this would require an AOC.
CASEVAC should be used only after ALL OTHER MEANS OF RAPID TRANSPORT
HAVE BEEN EXHAUSTED. This is because there are commercial companies out there trying to earn a buck doing this for a living and they dont want public money stealing the show.
A HEMS flight requires intent. Intent to commit an emergency medical response. Be it operational and/or financial.
You either intend to man your a/c with a full time paramedic, or
Plan to pick one up en route, or
collect one at scene, or
charge the ambulance authority for your services.
Your intent signals your desire to operate outside the PAOC. Thus the need for an approval. This is not guaranteed. The CAA have to vet your operation and it is themselves who will decide whether you deserve a HEMS Approval (police).
When operating under HEMS you operate under JAR OPs 3.005(d)Annex.
There are no insurance complications.
There are restrictions - the main being no night HEMS unless you either operate twin pilot OR, the terrain you operate over allows the CAA to grant you approval for night ops with a suitably qualified HEMS crew member. In the UK I believe only Wilts have this exemption?
Certainly keeps the pilots honed
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Thomas
Sussex have been operating night HEMS longer than anyone and are certainly CAA approved for that operation.
The Sussex Air Ambulance web site was set up by Kent Air Ambulance and was a predatory cash-raising exercise by them, trying to sneak into Sussex to raise money from people who already had a perfectly good Air Ambulance (Joint Police/HEMS unit, Shoreham).
The Sussex unit is a good model for a low(er) crime area and works well there. The joint unit setup may not work so well somewhere like West Yorks?
Sussex have been operating night HEMS longer than anyone and are certainly CAA approved for that operation.
The Sussex Air Ambulance web site was set up by Kent Air Ambulance and was a predatory cash-raising exercise by them, trying to sneak into Sussex to raise money from people who already had a perfectly good Air Ambulance (Joint Police/HEMS unit, Shoreham).
The Sussex unit is a good model for a low(er) crime area and works well there. The joint unit setup may not work so well somewhere like West Yorks?
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There seem to me to be 2 possibilities for contemplating acquiring a HEMS approval:
1) In a police Unit which keeps pretty busy, but has regular requests for CASEVAC. Rather differently to what TC is suggesting, there are various problems with taking on those tasks, because of the grey area over the definition of a CASEVAC. This is a case where the police force and ASU concerned want to do the task, it is safe to do it, but it might not strictly be a CASEVAC, as defined. Rather than worry over whether it is or not, if the ASU got the HEMS approval, then the decision would be simpler: is it safe to do the task, and do we want to do it? It would avoid the risk of working outside the legal requirements.
2) The other case is the one suggested by whoateallthepies and bearintheair, with Surrey as the quoted example of a combined unit, with someone other than the police contributing to the cost of running the hele for HEMS ops. As has been said, this would only probably be appropriate in a relatively "lightly-loaded" police unit in a county or other ruralish area.
1) In a police Unit which keeps pretty busy, but has regular requests for CASEVAC. Rather differently to what TC is suggesting, there are various problems with taking on those tasks, because of the grey area over the definition of a CASEVAC. This is a case where the police force and ASU concerned want to do the task, it is safe to do it, but it might not strictly be a CASEVAC, as defined. Rather than worry over whether it is or not, if the ASU got the HEMS approval, then the decision would be simpler: is it safe to do the task, and do we want to do it? It would avoid the risk of working outside the legal requirements.
2) The other case is the one suggested by whoateallthepies and bearintheair, with Surrey as the quoted example of a combined unit, with someone other than the police contributing to the cost of running the hele for HEMS ops. As has been said, this would only probably be appropriate in a relatively "lightly-loaded" police unit in a county or other ruralish area.
Casevac was built into the POM I when it was designed. It stems from the requirement to protect officers who may become injured during certain activities - plain and simple.
It must not be confused with an all encompassing remit to launch for anyone who is injured, day or night. This did happen in the early days until the CAA cracked down on it hard and advised the industry that it would be removed if it was abused.
One has to understand that CASEVAC is an emergency procedure to be carried out in extreme circumstances.
If you find you are 'inundated' by requests from the police to get airborne for medical assistance too often then it's time to re-educate them, I would suggest.
If you are getting increased requests from the ambulance authority to launch then seriously consider applying for an extension to your operating arm: HEMS Approval.
This is where our history came from - we were using Casevac as an excuse to launch for anything that smelled of injury!! [All those years ago]. We now have a proper infrastructure to respond appropriately.
I'd love to know the definition of light users????
Apologies to Sussex, re their night capability. I suspected they did but wasn't 100% sure.
Remember this - the whole concept revolves around your operating (licence) rights. Police operators do not hold an AOC, therefore they cannot carry out 'planned' medical assistance because this is commercial property. IF the CAA deem it necessary, they may allow you a HEMS approval to dip your toe into the commercial world (but with severe restrictions for air ambulance work).
We used to carry out around 150 ish per year before the Air Ambulance showed up. Now down to 60-80.
It must not be confused with an all encompassing remit to launch for anyone who is injured, day or night. This did happen in the early days until the CAA cracked down on it hard and advised the industry that it would be removed if it was abused.
One has to understand that CASEVAC is an emergency procedure to be carried out in extreme circumstances.
If you find you are 'inundated' by requests from the police to get airborne for medical assistance too often then it's time to re-educate them, I would suggest.
If you are getting increased requests from the ambulance authority to launch then seriously consider applying for an extension to your operating arm: HEMS Approval.
This is where our history came from - we were using Casevac as an excuse to launch for anything that smelled of injury!! [All those years ago]. We now have a proper infrastructure to respond appropriately.
I'd love to know the definition of light users????
Apologies to Sussex, re their night capability. I suspected they did but wasn't 100% sure.
Remember this - the whole concept revolves around your operating (licence) rights. Police operators do not hold an AOC, therefore they cannot carry out 'planned' medical assistance because this is commercial property. IF the CAA deem it necessary, they may allow you a HEMS approval to dip your toe into the commercial world (but with severe restrictions for air ambulance work).
We used to carry out around 150 ish per year before the Air Ambulance showed up. Now down to 60-80.
Tightgit
TC Wrote
The PAOM says (Section 5, Chapter 2, Paragraph 1.1)
As there is no mention of that sick or injured person being a Police Officer there, would TC be good enough to tell us when it changed?
Casevac is a POLICE ROLE. It should be treated under the same auspices as a pursuit or a misper etc. In that the rules and regs are fully embedded in the PAOM I.
It was/is designed purely to swoop and scoop a downed police officer and transfer to a medical facility - endex.
It was/is designed purely to swoop and scoop a downed police officer and transfer to a medical facility - endex.
c) Casevac
A flight, the purpose of which, is to give immediate assistance to a sick or injured person in life threatening circumstances
A flight, the purpose of which, is to give immediate assistance to a sick or injured person in life threatening circumstances
My basic understanding for what it's worth:-
All police operators hold, or contract to someone who holds, an AOC. It may be a Police AOC rather than CAT or HEMS but nonetheless an AOC.
The concept of casevac was originally separate from the threat to life case; in the days of putting together the PAOM some inputs were rather more fanciful than others, and there used to be a permission to bust the performance/third party risk question to land and assist a police officer whose life was in danger. It fairly quickly became obvious that this was unrealistically restrictive, also that if it was specifically a cop in danger then it would equally likely result in, say, a petrol bomb through the tail rotor. That narrow definition was lifted in about 1997, though I don't have an old CAP612 to hand.
As I would define it, "Life threatening" means "if the helicopter doesn't intervene someone might die" [note, not "will die" though I'd stand corrected on that by those with more time in court than me]. Similarly there is an easement from normal landing site requirements for "perceived threat to life" assistance to medical passengers which IIRC is derived from the original early 1990s permission.
As for other matters - again this is my interpretation -
The less life threatening stuff can still be done as long as you're satisfied about the measure of last resort bit, you can't be paid, and you can't use the permissions about the scary landing sites.
The question of more widespread HEMS is an interesting one. Personally I believe:- if it's really threat to life then we can and should do it for free. If it's not, they might squawk a bit as they're carried down the hill but we don't need to take our aircraft off police duties. If one goes HEMS [with possibly night police casevac] in an area with a charitably funded AA, one is then asking the ambulance authority to pay for a less well equipped out-of-hours service which they get for free when the AA is on, or for free by the SAR units. I feel they'd probably demur and decide to "manage", unless the charitable trust were prepared to shoulder the burden; some have more money than others so I wouldn't care to predict how that would go.
Rant over.....
All police operators hold, or contract to someone who holds, an AOC. It may be a Police AOC rather than CAT or HEMS but nonetheless an AOC.
The concept of casevac was originally separate from the threat to life case; in the days of putting together the PAOM some inputs were rather more fanciful than others, and there used to be a permission to bust the performance/third party risk question to land and assist a police officer whose life was in danger. It fairly quickly became obvious that this was unrealistically restrictive, also that if it was specifically a cop in danger then it would equally likely result in, say, a petrol bomb through the tail rotor. That narrow definition was lifted in about 1997, though I don't have an old CAP612 to hand.
As I would define it, "Life threatening" means "if the helicopter doesn't intervene someone might die" [note, not "will die" though I'd stand corrected on that by those with more time in court than me]. Similarly there is an easement from normal landing site requirements for "perceived threat to life" assistance to medical passengers which IIRC is derived from the original early 1990s permission.
As for other matters - again this is my interpretation -
The less life threatening stuff can still be done as long as you're satisfied about the measure of last resort bit, you can't be paid, and you can't use the permissions about the scary landing sites.
The question of more widespread HEMS is an interesting one. Personally I believe:- if it's really threat to life then we can and should do it for free. If it's not, they might squawk a bit as they're carried down the hill but we don't need to take our aircraft off police duties. If one goes HEMS [with possibly night police casevac] in an area with a charitably funded AA, one is then asking the ambulance authority to pay for a less well equipped out-of-hours service which they get for free when the AA is on, or for free by the SAR units. I feel they'd probably demur and decide to "manage", unless the charitable trust were prepared to shoulder the burden; some have more money than others so I wouldn't care to predict how that would go.
Rant over.....
Tightgit
I still don't recall the PAOM (even in 97) specifying police officers as the subject of the casevac role (although I don't recall the last time I had intimate relations with a lady either!
so that probably counts for nothing!). I will accept though, that that was the intent when the PAOM 1 was created. (aren't I magnanimous
)
so that probably counts for nothing!). I will accept though, that that was the intent when the PAOM 1 was created. (aren't I magnanimous )
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......................anyway, back to the original point.
How do other potential regions see regionalisation?
Seems like some large metropolitan forces will regionalise (West Midlands)
and some won't (Greater Manchester)
How's that work then?
How do other potential regions see regionalisation?
Seems like some large metropolitan forces will regionalise (West Midlands)
and some won't (Greater Manchester)
How's that work then?
Originally Posted by Droopy
The concept of casevac was originally separate from the threat to life case;
We seem to have gone off message here, & got sidetracked into the solely Police or Police & Hems thread.
Surely the original question was about the effect of the current round of amagamations. In which case its effective coverage that will count not which type of operation. Anyway the fund holders the New Police Forces will be more atuned to their own operations not someone elses.
There are many more pure air ambulance set ups around today than when the Police units started & they are unlikely to want to be swallowed up now!
I remain concerned that with a huge but largely insufficient budget to manage future managers will try to spread the jam too thin!
Surely the original question was about the effect of the current round of amagamations. In which case its effective coverage that will count not which type of operation. Anyway the fund holders the New Police Forces will be more atuned to their own operations not someone elses.
There are many more pure air ambulance set ups around today than when the Police units started & they are unlikely to want to be swallowed up now!
I remain concerned that with a huge but largely insufficient budget to manage future managers will try to spread the jam too thin!
Regionalisation was allegedly to create police forces large enough to undertake major enquiries.
So it seemed that all forces except London and Manchester were in the firing line because they already had 28,000 and 11,000 respectively [1997 figures].
So any group with around 1-3,000 was going to be amalgamated.
But then we hear that although Lancashire Sussex and Hampshire were about the same size [over 3,000] the former would have to join Cumbria but the latter pair could remain separate.
Its certainly not consistent West Midlands should have been safe with over 7,000 but seems to have picked up its smaller neighbours - probably because they encirled the larger force I guess.
Which brings us to Yorkshire. On the 3,000 rule basis West Yorks are well clear, so are South Yorkshire... but both North Yorkshire and Humberside are in the firing line.
So it seemed that all forces except London and Manchester were in the firing line because they already had 28,000 and 11,000 respectively [1997 figures].
So any group with around 1-3,000 was going to be amalgamated.
But then we hear that although Lancashire Sussex and Hampshire were about the same size [over 3,000] the former would have to join Cumbria but the latter pair could remain separate.
Its certainly not consistent West Midlands should have been safe with over 7,000 but seems to have picked up its smaller neighbours - probably because they encirled the larger force I guess.
Which brings us to Yorkshire. On the 3,000 rule basis West Yorks are well clear, so are South Yorkshire... but both North Yorkshire and Humberside are in the firing line.
Lancashire seemed almost indecently eager to merge with Cumbria, perhaps to avoid being subsumed by Merseyside. At least the acronym for the new force name should mean there are fewer headaches....
Calpol
Calpol
Tightgit
Crossed lines snaks? - I think the mists of time are confusing the above two cases as being one and the same thing, which they weren't.
Your point
The concept of casevac was originally separate from the threat to life case; in the days of putting together the PAOM some inputs were rather more fanciful than others, and there used to be a permission to bust the performance/third party risk question to land and assist a police officer whose life was in danger. It fairly quickly became obvious that this was unrealistically restrictive, also that if it was specifically a cop in danger then it would equally likely result in, say, a petrol bomb through the tail rotor. That narrow definition was lifted in about 1997, though I don't have an old CAP612 to hand.
