Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Two or three times a day, the engine roars, the rotor turns and the medical crew prepares for lift off.
The Life Star helicopter based at the Lawrence Municipal Airport must be ready to transfer an injured resident to a trauma center at a moment’s notice.
Life Star flight paramedic Mark Larson shows where a patient lays inside of the helicopter. Life Star of Kansas has one helicopter it uses for medical emergencies. It has been serving Kansas since 1988.
Last month the helicopter was dispatched to a bike accident near the intersection of Crestline Drive and Bob Billings Parkway. But an ambulance took the patient to Lawrence Memorial Hospital and the helicopter flew back to base empty.
Chelsey Derks, a junior from Olathe, said, “I’ve wondered where the money for the helicopter comes from. I see it flying around Lawrence and it just seems like we don’t need a helicopter for such a small city.”
Life Star is a not-for-profit corporation owned by two Topeka hospitals. Greg Hildenbrand, the Life Star executive director, said that if someone is transported in the helicopter, then that person is responsible for about $10,000.
But, Hildenbrand said, insurance pays for most of it. Life Star rarely ends up collecting more than half of the charge.
Hildenbrand said it is extremely expensive just to maintain the helicopter, not counting the cost of gas. He said one helicopter costs about $3 million to purchase.
The helicopter does not take patients to Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said Hildenbrand.
“It takes the helicopter about six or seven minutes to get off the ground and then it takes some time to get to the scene,” Hildenbrand said. “If a patient is going to Lawrence Memorial then it is just faster to use a ground ambulance.”
The helicopter flies two types of transfers. The first is an inter-hospital transfer in which a doctor calls for the helicopter and sends the patient to a different hospital. The second is a scene transfer in which the helicopter is called to the scene of an accident and the patient is taken to a hospital with a trauma center.
Because Lawrence Memorial Hospital does not have a trauma center and is not equipped to handle orthopedic or head injuries, patients with those injuries are sent to hospitals in Topeka or Kansas City. The helicopter will pick up patients within a 150-mile radius of its base.
Reader poll
Do you think Lawrence should have a LifeFlight helicopter service?
- Yes 88% 15 votes
- No 11% 2 votes
- Undecided 0% 0 votes
17 total votes.
Flight Nurse Brian Pope has worked for Life Star since 1996, covering two 24-hour shifts a week. He said that about 70 percent of the calls he sees are inter-hospital transfers.
In the case of last month’s bike crash, the helicopter was called to the scene of the bike accident because the patient’s injuries were thought to be worse than they were. Since the patient did not ride in the helicopter, he did not have to pay a fee, Pope said.
Although Pope works a second job in the emergency room of the Lawrence Memorial Hospital, he said his job with Life Star is the best nursing job that could be had.
“It’s very prestigious, everyone in the nursing field kind of looks up to this job,” Pope said. “It gets you out of the hospital and you get to do lots of different procedures on patients as a nurse that you couldn’t do in a hospital.”
— Edited by Emily McCoy.
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