Medical Helicopters Offer Lifesaving Chance For Rural Areas, Wreck Victims

KILLEEN — The real-life job of the three-person medical helicopter crews that serve Central Texas could easily provide must-watch material for an addictive TV reality show.It’s responding to emergencies when every second counts. Landing in the middle of highways, just feet from horrific car crashes. And saving lives that would have surely been lost otherwise.

In Central Texas, there are medical choppers in West, Fairfield, Bryan, Corsicana, Georgetown and two in Killeen — a number that has more than doubled in the past eight years. They serve Hillcrest, Providence and Scott & White hospitals, none of which has its own helicopter.

For those in life-threatening danger in rural areas, these helicopters have proved time and again to be the difference between life and death, emergency medical officials say.

“In a trauma, seconds count, and time can kill,” said Jeffrey Mincy, director of the Coryell Memorial Health Care System EMS. “Nothing we do is as important as getting that patient to a surgeon. If someone has a heart attack in Jonesboro or Evant, it’s an hour drive to the hospital. By helicopter, you’re talking 25 minutes.”

The crews are made up of a pilot, registered nurse and a paramedic. They’re called upon by dispatchers and first-responders, mainly from volunteer fire departments or rural ambulance services.

They have plenty of stories of tragedy and a few of triumph — those days when they know their hours of training have paid off, and they’re reminded why they do their jobs.

Flight paramedic Bobby Steele tells of the day that STAT Air 1 in Killeen got a call from a San Antonio hospital, requesting they fly to a special-needs children’s camp north of Waco to pick up a 6-year-old girl in need of a heart transplant. They had a heart for her.

Steele, a 37-year-old father of three, smiles as he talks of feeling like a hero, landing at the camp to pick up the child and take her to San Antonio. All of the children in the camp, he said, were outside cheering when they arrived.

Not every day, of course, is as heroic. Often, there’s a lot of waiting. Sometimes they’re placed on standby until first-responders get a look at the severity of a person’s condition. Other times, they’re told to come out, only to be sent back. Often, they’re called upon by rural hospitals to transfer patients to a bigger facility.

STAT Air 1 services a 200-mile radius and responds to an average of two calls per day. Four years ago, Louisiana-based Petroleum Helicopters Inc., or PHI, purchased STAT Air 1 from Scott & White. PHI also owns the choppers in Corsicana, Georgetown and Bryan, as well as seven other locations in Texas and 70 nationwide.

The other medical helicopters that service Central Texas are owned by Missouri-based Air Evac Lifeteam.

The crew of STAT Air 1 is based in a four-room trailer at Skylark Field in Killeen. Parked in front is the six-seat, one-stretcher air ambulance. The chopper has more life-saving capabilities than an ambulance, including a registered nurse. STAT Air 1 carries two units of O-negative blood, two cardiac monitors, a ventilator, obstetrical monitors, IV pumps, and more than 250 types of medicine, including anesthetics and drugs to stop labor.

Andy Schaumburg, STAT Air 1’s 30-year veteran helicopter pilot and former Army pilot, loves to tell of the time the crew was called out to a horrific crash on Interstate 35 south of Waco. A justice of the peace had already arrived on-scene and pronounced a man dead. Schaumburg landed on the highway, and the crew brought the man back to life, Schaumburg said.

“I truly believe that if you’re hurt, and you can hear us coming before you pass out, you will survive,” he said. “These guys will do what it takes to bring you back. I’ve seen it. They’re that good.”

Flight registered nurse Jeff Brown, 37, of Robinson, says he and the rest of the crew often stop by hospitals after their 24-hour shifts to visit patients they have transported. Brown, a 16-year veteran of emergency rooms and ambulance services, said crews often get attached to the children, particularly the victims of child abuse.

The flight crews regularly participate in training with area fire departments and ambulance crews.

“They’ve trained us to make sure we’re comfortable with their services,” said Charles Bratcher, Groesbeck volunteer fire chief with 36 years in emergency services. “A lot of the people working the helicopters are old firefighters and people we’ve worked with for years. They’re people we know and trust, which helps things run smoothly on the ground.”

Schaumburg and the other pilots rotate 12-hour shifts on the helicopter crew. In the past year, they were given more tools that he said take the guesswork out of decisions regarding weather, how high to fly and possible obstacles along the flight path.

They will not, he said, fly when weather is questionable or when there is not a safe landing spot. It is the pilot’s sole discretion whether the team flies to a call, and the pilot is told little about the emergency.

“The days of, ‘We’re going to get that patient, no matter what’ are gone,” said Brittney Misercola, a flight nurse on STAT Air 1. “Safety is the first priority.”

For enhanced safety at night, the pilots have night-vision goggles, which are adjustable, provide 20/20 vision and have enhanced depth-perception capabilities, Schaumburg said.

The job is not without risk. On June 8, 2008, a Bryan-based PHI medical helicopter crashed in Huntsville, killing the three-person flight crew and the patient it was carrying to Houston.

According to an August report by the National Transportation Safety Board, the crash was caused by the pilot’s failure to see that the chopper was descending into Sam Houston State Park in Huntsville. The board notes that darkness contributed to the accident.

That year marked the deadliest on record for medical helicopters, according to the NTSB. Including the four in Bryan, 29 people died in 2008 in 12 medical helicopter accidents, eight of which were fatal.

So far in 2009, six people died in two medical helicopter crashes. In all, there were eight accidents.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, it has since focused on encouraging risk-management training for flight crews faced with decisions about whether to launch a flight, better training for night operations and deteriorating weather conditions. Misercola said PHI has implemented all of the newest safety recommendations.

Julie Heavrin, public relations manager at Air Evac Lifeteam, said that the crews in Fairfield, West, Bryan and Killeen will have the night-vision goggles early next year.

Both companies also have membership programs in which people can pay an annual fee, like insurance. Both run about $50 per year.

If a patient is not in a membership program, the companies bill the person’s insurance. Misercola said the expense is written off by the company if the patient cannot pay.

If the chopper is called out and then it is decided on-scene that the crew is not needed, the company eats the cost of the travel.

On average, if a helicopter comes to the rescue of a patient, it will cost between $8,000 and $10,000 before insurance, not including mileage, Misercola said.

But, Bratcher said, time and again, the speed of the chopper, coupled with the advanced life-saving capabilities of the crew, have proven priceless.

“If I was in trouble, I’d want their help,” Groesbeck’s Bratcher said. “A lot of times, I’ve seen the helicopter crew be the difference between life and death for a person.”