Arobur
 

A thin skinned Clinician, are You?
Anyway, Here in Norway we have had AirAmbulance since 1932 when Viggo Widerøe started with a floatplane saving life in remote places. The Airforce has always had the SAR capability using the Catalina initaly.
In 1978 Dr Jens Moe helped establish the Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation, and there is a one page summary on luftambulanse.no that must be mandatory reading for a budding entrepneur like Your self !

This Gang is my heroes as when the sun drops and the storm leads to accidents, off they go on the VFR Night routes low level to pick up the wounded and get them to safety.
Not a place for amateurs , Son.
Its all been tried before, possible the most challenging Heli ops next to logging and Military.

Regards
Cpt B

Did you know there is an R44 providing EMS in rural NE Germany since 1995? Obviously not for patient transport, but it's quite an effective tool for getting the doc to the people that desperately need one.

It's not such a crazy idea. When I did the research for the Cornwall AA back in 1986 I found out that the then market-leaders in Germany were rarely transporting patients. Their advantage was that their crew always included a trauma trained doctor and they were hospital based. The doc would invariably have a road ambulance on hand so he cold fix-up the patient and send him/her on their way back to the GH or specialist centre. If you can start an AA operation with a standard fit helicopter delivering the doc and his kit plus maybe a paramedic, it's a much cheaper option and can give you some good data to enable the case to be made for a full HEMS machine.

If we are talking UK then it is essential to work with the local Ambulance Service and receiving hospitals. Attempts were made in those very early days to short-cut the system in Devon, London (and incidentally in Saudi Arabia). For any HEMS system to succeed it must be embraced by the entire health care system.
G.

DELIVERING CLINICAL SKILL TO SCENE
Norwegian air ambulance managers have described how with 12 ambulance bases and 6 SAR bases they can use an ambulance aircraft to longline a paramedic to a casualty in a difficult location. The paramedic then looks after the casualty while the SAR aircraft is still en route and extraction is then by SAR aircraft with winch.

AYRSHIRE
The OP is talking about Ayrshire. Quick check of posting date: not 1st April. Proceed. It would be hard to think of a less appropriate location for such an effort. Helimed 5 is just a few minutes away, Rescue 199 is at Prestwick, there are no extreme local factors pressing for extra cover (remote rural, intense large city), several key politicians (including FM) and health service figures come from Ayrshire and would be all over this if there were a genuine requirement.

I think Arobur is an ambulance technicain with ambitions..............bless.

Good point! Couple years back I've been doing an assessment to establish a HEMS system in an African country. Our talks to establish a heli-base at the most modern maximum care facility shattered this plan altogether when we were told in no uncertain terms that they couldn't handle those cases because - quote - "Our patients tend to triage themselves en-route! Whoever makes it here would've survived anyway!" and if we were to bring all those critically ill patients from horrific car crashes on a daily basis it would surpass their capabilities as well as their budget in a matter of days :rolleyes:

Hawkeye - In Saudi we faced a situation where each hospital was established for a particular clientele and if you were not in that particular 'club' then the ambulance would be turned away. A 'joined-up' service requires everything else to be 'joined-up'.

We can all sit back to a certain extent and rest on our laurels for enough time has passed - 31 years now - to forget just how hard it was to get HEMS off the ground in the UK. No sooner had the announcement that we would begin the service here in Cornwall than the naysayers were at it. There were doctors and clinicians of all kinds taking up the cudgels. There was a bitter struggle to get through to the start-line on April 1st 1987 intact and it is down to the fortitude and clever political manoeuvring of the local NHS managers that we survived. At one stage even the D & C Police tried to head us off before the start date. The deployment of the Air Ambulance apparently threatened their plan to acquire a second machine for use in Cornwall (their B0105 was based in Devon at that time).

It wouldn't surprise me to find that similar tales of tribulation involving the kind of internal and external battles we experienced also featured in all the other Air Ambulance Units. One day someone will document the pathway our HEMS services have taken. They have apparently created a new branch of UK medicine called PREHOSPITAL CARE. Their story deserves to be told.
G.

I guess that explains why all these old guys **** themselves at the thought lol

I really do hear where you're coming from DB and in a perfect world it might well be the best thing, however...

What would actually happen is this: There would be a massive bun fight for the resources to run this uber-AA service. It would end up going to a single large operator who would then run it his own way to the advantage of the vested interests and the disadvantage of everyone else. Very soon it would not be £3, it would be £10 and there would be less aircraft.

At the moment the UK has superb AA coverage. yes it's spotty in places and it's sometimes inconsistent. Some of the charities and operators are "different" to the rest but there is a huge variety of operators and charities rather than one single overarching administrative behemoth. The charities generally have good relationships and recognition within their areas of operations and there is a sense of "ownership". Merging independent local AA into one single entity - Have a wee look at the NPAS thread to see how that's likely to turn out!

OH

That is what we did 60 years ago today with hospitals. We call it the NHS. Not perfect, but at least we have integrated health care to a common standard, with common oversight for all the population. It covers all health care except.......air ambulances, where some are financially fine, others less so. Some are 24/7, others not. Some have doctors, others not. Some are well integrated into trauma care, others..... some do interhospital ITU work below recognised medical standards etc etc

I agree NPAS has been a disaster but surely we can do better

You won't go far wrong with the Bell 429, very big cabin. Wiltshire AA operate one, give them a call they will be happy to talk to you.

Cool, thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.