By Ellie Bogue
The News-Sentinel
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — The wind is cutting. Icy fingers bite bare skin in the gaps between wrist and glove, scarf and neck. Four stories off the ground, three blue-clad figures hover around the dragonfly shape of the Parkview Hospital Samaritan medical helicopter.
The crew is carrying out a routine inspection as their shift begins at 6 a.m. If anything looks, sounds or feels wrong, it will be relayed to two mechanics, whose troll-like office is tucked under the helipad. Inspection complete, the crew — pilot Brad Wilson, paramedic Ken Strong and registered nurse Sue Markey — head for the Parkview cafeteria for breakfast.
With two helicopters in its fleet, one in Fort Wayne and the other in Rochester, the Parkview Samaritan program recently celebrated its 19th year.
“I was impressed with the commitment Parkview has had to the trauma services,” said Markey, who has been with the program for 18 years. “They were really excited and committed to what they were doing ... . It turned out to be a very good place to work.”
Markey and Strong work a 12-hour shift, three days in a row. Then its off for three days and the shift swings to night for three days. Markey looks tired but she smiles as she said, “After all these years, I like flying both (day and night shifts).”
Wilson, one of three pilots in the program, works four days on and four days off, also 12-hour shifts. He too swings from days to nights after four days.
By Federal Aviation Administration regulation, pilots cannot fly more then 14 hours in a row, which is why their shifts are 12 hours. In addition, the Parkview Samaritan program has a rule you cannot work another job and then come to work on the helicopter.
The crew thinks it’s a fair rule.
“We have a very high-risk job,” Wilson said. “You don’t want someone who has been up for 20 hours working on you.”
The Samaritan program flies a Dauphin, considered one of the safest helicopters in the business. Built by Aerospatiale, the same company that makes the Concorde Jet, its two engines, auto instrument control and fuel capacity make it one of the safest birds out there. The U.S. Coast Guard uses the same $5 million helicopter.
Parkview leases two through Air Methods Corp. of Englewood, Colo. According to the company’s Web site ( www.airmethods.com), it is the nation’s largest provider of air medical emergency transport services, with 314 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft at 254 bases in 42 states. The pilots, mechanics and the insurance on the helicopters are all covered under the lease agreement.
Maintaining safe working conditions is very important to the crew. Wilson is concerned with the rapid growth of medical helicopter usage in Indiana.
“The whole state has tripled or quadrupled in the past three years,” he said.
Currently, Indiana does not limit the number of medical helicopters that can operate in the state.
Indiana has licensed 13 air ambulance services to operate in the state, and also has licensed seven more services based in Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky to serve portions of Indiana.
These services are regulated by two systems: FAA regulations, which regulate the pilots, mechanics and the helicopters; and the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, which covers the medical licensing.
The Indiana Emergency Medical Services Commission sets the guidelines for the licenses, and every two years providers reapply for a license, said John Erickson, spokesman for Indiana Homeland Security department.
The commission has strict rules concerning everything from equipment to the number of personnel and the communication links with medical and emergency personnel, Erickson said. Failing to meet any of the criteria can get a license revoked.
Regulations are designed to prevent accidents.
In June, for example, two medical helicopters collided mid-air killing six people near Flagstaff, Ariz. According to a USA Today newspaper story, the collision of the two medical helicopters was the first in the history of the National Transportation Safety Board. The story also reported the helicopters were not speaking to air traffic control at the time of the crash.
Fort Wayne currently has two competing medical helicopters, Samaritan and nearly 5-year-old Lutheran Air from Lutheran Hospital. They work together to ensure flight safety.
Former Lutheran Air Director Kevin Wellman said, “We are here primarily to serve our health-care network, and secondly to act as a backup for Samaritan.”
Lutheran and Parkview meet monthly to review how calls were handled. They have a special pilots’ channel that both crews can use to communicate with each other. In addition, air traffic control at Fort Wayne International airport keeps an eye on both helicopters.
“We are not unfriendly to each other,” Markey said. “We try to work with each other for safety. You have to talk to each other constantly, in the air and on the ground, for safety,” she added.
The Allen County Dispatch has divided the county between the two services so that both respond to whatever is closer — and both deliver patients to the hospital that best serves the needs of the patient.
Parkview, on Randallia Drive, is the only American College of Surgeons-verified trauma center in the area. So if the Lutheran helicopter crew picked up someone in need of acute care, they would take the person to Parkview, even if Lutheran Hospital is closer.
By the same token, if Samaritan picked up a burn victim, the helicopter crew would take the person to St. Joseph Hospital because they have the only burn-care unit in northeast Indiana.
On a recent day, that’s exactly what happens.
The call came in mid-morning inside the crew’s office space, a floor above and adjacent to the helicopter pad. No elevator means a quick run down a flight of stairs. Within minutes they are in the air headed for a factory in Bluffton, where a burn victim awaits them.
Headsets allow conversation to be heard over the engine noise, but the chatter is kept to a minimum as patient updates and air traffic control instructions are broadcast to the helicopter.
When a medical helicopter takes flight, it receives priority from air traffic control, but the crew still watches for possible flight hazards. When arriving at the scene, they rely on local emergency responders to mark the landing zone and to alert them to any obstacles nearby.
As the chopper closes in on its destination, the crew is glued to the windows, looking for any hazards in their flight path. Flares mark the scene, and the pilot touches down without a problem.
Markey and Strong hop out to assess the patient. If they need to stabilize him further, the pilot will shut down the engines to conserve fuel. If they can load the patient right away, the engines will stay running.
This patient is stable enough to transport. So, with the help of the emergency personnel on the scene, the victim is loaded into the bird.
The destination is St Joseph Hospital. On the flight there, paramedic Ken Strong sits at the patient’s head with a respirator bag he might need, talking with the patient and constantly assessing his condition. Markey figures out the dosage of painkiller and administers it to the patient.
Flying at 205 miles per hour, it’s only minutes before Samaritan lands on the St Joseph Hospital helipad.
The flight crew and the waiting burn team quickly unload the patient. Markey and Strong follow them inside, giving an update on the status of the patient.
Soon they are belted in Samaritan and headed back to Parkview. Upon their return, they will have about two hours’ worth of paper work to file on the run.
Back on the Parkview helipad, the mood is lighter. Their patient is safe at St Joseph Hospital, and their thoughts are on lunch.
Strong smiled. “It’s hot brownie Wednesday!” he announced.