MedFlight to establish copter base at airport

Sub­mit­ted photo

The heli­copter that Med­Flight plans to install at its incom­ing Galion base will be an Amer­i­can Euro­copter EC-130 like the one shown here. Even­tu­ally the com­pany will stan­dard­ize its heli­copter fleet and use this heli­copter model exclusively.

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Med­Flight, an emer­gency trans­port ser­vice head­quar­tered in Colum­bus, is begin­ning the process of estab­lish­ing a heli­copter base at Galion Munic­i­pal Air­port, accord­ing to Med­Flight pres­i­dent and CEO Rod Crane. City man­ager Gene Toy is work­ing with Med­Flight to answer ques­tions regard­ing hangar con­struc­tion or acqui­si­tion, water and sewer envi­ron­men­tal issues and site improvements.

Galion is in the mid­dle of a 100-mile black hole of emer­gency air trans­port, which made the air­port a prime loca­tion for Med­Flight. “There’s a radius of 40–50 miles around that area that does not have access to med­ical air­craft promptly,” Crane said. The near­est Med­Flight base cur­rently oper­at­ing is in Lodi, about 50 miles dis­tant, and the Marysville and Colum­bus bases are 55 to 60 miles from Galion. “So we’re look­ing at bring­ing an air­craft and a team,” said Crane, “to improve our response time for scene acci­dents and med­ical emergencies.”

“At this time we are talk­ing with the man­age­ment of the air­port,” Crane said, to deter­mine the most eco­nom­i­cal way to estab­lish the base. Since heli­copter crews work in 24-hour shifts and the heli­copters them­selves have to be ser­viced and pro­tected from the ele­ments, “it’s a com­plex base,” accord­ing to Crane.

A Med­Flight base takes five to six months to become fully oper­a­tional. Crane expects this one, the ninth Med­Flight heli­copter base in Ohio, to be up and run­ning by next spring. That time­line may be changed, though, if it takes a long time to arrange hous­ing for the flight crew.

Med­flight will employ four pilots, a mechanic, and fif­teen flight nurses at the new base, some of whom may be cur­rent Med­Flight employ­ees will­ing to relo­cate to Galion. The flight nurses who work in 24-hour shifts and the four pilots trade off in 12-hour shifts, so they will need some­where to stay while on duty. “We need rest quar­ters, a kitchen, pretty much a home envi­ron­ment to keep them safe and con­nected to our head­quar­ters,” Crane said.

A base would also require con­stant access to fuel, so the com­pany is also eval­u­at­ing fuel­ing options at the airport.

To house the flight crew, the com­pany is look­ing at either leas­ing a home the county owns adja­cent to the air­port on State Route 309 or remod­el­ing the unused space upstairs in the airport’s fixed base oper­a­tor, the main build­ing where pilots may refuel their planes and catch some shut-eye if needed. If Med­Flight leases the home the com­pany would also have to build a helipad.

The heli­copter that Med­Flight plans to install at the base is an Amer­i­can Euro­copter EC-130, a new heli­copter model that Med­Flight plans to use exclu­sively after a tran­si­tional period. The new EC-130s will be the first air med­ical heli­copters in the coun­try to have an inter­nal cabin man­age­ment con­trol sys­tem for patient oxy­gen, suc­tion, air sys­tems and light­ing con­trol, accord­ing to a fact sheet pro­vided by Med­Flight direc­tor of busi­ness devel­op­ment Todd Bai­ley. “Med­Flight is most proud of our long-standing safety record and qual­ity ser­vice focused on doing what is right for patients,” Bai­ley said.

Med­Flight heli­copters cur­rently trans­port patients from Galion Com­mu­nity Hos­pi­tal when needed. The pri­vate non­profit was formed in 1995 from the con­sol­i­da­tion of the heli­copter trans­port ser­vices oper­ated by Grant Med­ical Cen­ter and OSU Med­ical Cen­ter. Since then, Med­Flight has estab­lished sev­eral heli­copter bases around the state and founded a divi­sion to pro­vide Mobile Inten­sive Care Unit trans­port ser­vices between hospitals.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Nov 3 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.