Donate to Science & Enterprise

S&E on Mastodon

S&E on LinkedIn

S&E on Flipboard

Please share Science & Enterprise

Many Inter-Hospital Helicopter Patient Transports Not Needed

Medevac helicopter (FEMA.gov)

(FEMA.gov)

Analysts at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston found many neurosurgical patients transported by helicopter to a critical care facility from hospitals could have made the trip at least as quickly by ambulance. Their findings appeared yesterday in the online journal PLoS One.

Surgeon Brian Walcott and colleagues reviewed electronic health records of patients using helicopter transfers in 2008 to a Boston trauma center, specifically neurosurgery patients admitted to the trauma center’s emergency department. In their analysis, the researchers focused on the time interval ending with the first invasive intervention of the patient.

The team also estimated the driving times for the same distances flown with Google Maps software using exact street addresses to calculate times for door-to-door delivery. They requested transport times from ground and air ambulance services, but were denied these data.

The researchers found 167 cases of the total 526 inter-facility transfers — all from referring hospitals in the northeast U.S. — that met their criteria. Some three-quarters (125 or 75%) of the patients were triaged to an intensive care unit or taken directly into surgery.

The median time of transporting the patients by helicopter to the trauma unit to the time of neurosurgical intervention ranged from 1 to almost 118 hours, depending on the diagnosis. Driving times from the referring hospitals, however, were estimated at 1 hour or less for 101 or 60 percent of the patients. For one-third (34%) of these patients, driving times were calculated at 45 minutes or less.

The authors conclude that in many of the cases reviewed, patients were transported by helicopter at considerably higher cost — $12,000 to $25,000 per flight — when ground ambulance at $800 to $2,000 per trip would have been clinically suitable. The researchers note that advances in telemedicine may make possible more extensive evaluations of patients at referring facilities, leading to more suitable transport outcomes.

Read more: Helicopter Transport Improves Survival of Severely Injured

*     *     *

1 comment to Many Inter-Hospital Helicopter Patient Transports Not Needed