New medical helicopter to serve three area hospitals

HSHS Southern Illinois Division has partnered with Air Methods Corporation (ARCH) to provide a new air medical service to three of its area hospitals and their communities.

On Thursday, HSHS launched HSHS Rescue Flight.

The new medical helicopter will be serving St. Joseph’s Highland in Highland, St. Joseph’s in Breese and St. Elizabeth’s in Belleville.

“This will be a real benefit to the community as a whole,” said Julie LaFrance, director of planning and operations at St. Joseph’s Highland. “HSHS Rescue Flight will add to the level of emergency care and safety for residents in our community.”

Brian Leonard, business development director at Air Methods, said ARCH is excited to expand its partnership with the HSHS system.

“Together, we saw an increased need for air medical care in the region, and this new base is an opportunity to better serve communities across Madison County and surrounding areas,” he said.

Hospital officials anticipate the new medical helicopter will cut patient transfer times by as much as 11 minutes. They say patients who need specialized medical care will no longer have to wait for a helicopter to commute from St. Louis.

“Our research shows we can save up to 11 minutes on transfer times for patients leaving Highland, if we have a helicopter based in our community,” LaFrance said. “Those are 11 minutes that can save heart muscle in cardiac patients and brain tissue in stroke patients.”

The helicopter base will be staffed at St. Joseph’s in Highland with four pilots, four paramedics and four flight nurses, who will rotate shifts.

The helicopter will be staffed with a pilot, paramedic and flight nurse 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, a maintenance crew for the helicopter is employed.

HSHS Rescue Flight has completed one patient transfer and numerous standby calls since Thursday, according to Amy Liefer, director of communications, at St. Joseph’s Highland.

“A standby call is when the crew is activated to do a weather check, preflight safety check and move to the aircraft to decrease the wait time, in case they are needed,” she said.

Highland City Manager Mark Latham said having the medical helicopter stationed in Highland will be a win-win situation not only for the Highland community but also for all the local fire districts who use its service.

“This all came about rather quickly,” Latham said.

LaFrance said HSHS was able to pull all the pieces together quickly since they already had the roadmap from the relationship Air Methods has with St. John’s HSHS in Springfield.

“We are always evaluating our processes and looking for ways to improve patient care and services,” she said.

“When looking at patients who are transferred for cardiac and stroke symptoms, we realized we had a great opportunity to streamline that process. HSHS Rescue Flight will complement our STAT Heart Program with protocols which save heart muscle and improve door-to-door time from our Emergency Department to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.”

LaFrance said HSHS Rescue Flight will benefit the entire community.

“In addition to saving minutes for our emergency department patients who need to be transferred, we are also able to respond to on scene emergencies, which will reduce transport times to trauma centers,” she said.

In early October, Highland Emergency Medical Services Chief Brian Wilson said changes would be forthcoming to his EMS department’s hospital transfer policy. The Highland EMS Department is projecting an 11 percent increase in non-emergency transfers over the prior year, he said. Those numbers, coupled with the department’s increasing overall call volume, are creating a strain on the department, according to Wilson, who said Highland EMS is averaging seven and a half calls a day.

During Fiscal Year 2015, the Highland EMS department had 2,545 calls, which was up 170 calls from fiscal year 2014.

Wilson is projecting the overall call volume will increase by another 9.4 percent during the current fiscal year.

But Wilson said he wants to have at least one of his department’s three ambulance available at all times.

“If we have to cut back on some of our longer trips (in order to do that), that’s what we will need to do,” he said.

This story was originally published January 25, 2016 at 3:49 PM with the headline "New medical helicopter to serve three area hospitals."