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SUMMIT — Opponents to Overlook Hospital’s proposed rooftop helipad fired their opening salvo at Monday night’s Zoning Board hearing, arguing that the hospital’s application is motivated by money, not medicine.
It’s a business. So said Dr. Bryan Bledsoe who flew in from Las Vegas to testify as the first witness presented by opponents on the increased use of helicopters throughout the country, and what this helipad would mean to Overlook Hospital and the community.
John ‘Jay’ DeLaney, the attorney representing opponents, was the mayor of Morristown when a helipad was approved for Morristown Memorial Hospital. He told the Independent Press that promises made at the Morristown Zoning Board meetings to limit the use of the Morristown helipad were not kept. Today, he said, police helicopters and other aircraft land at Morristown Memorial’s regional trauma center.
Overlook Hospital is not a regional trauma center and Overlook representatives have repeatedly said its helicopter usage will be limited to less than nine flights per month serving only its state-of-the-art neuroscience center.
When the hearings continue on March 15, DeLaney expects to present three residents from Morristown who live near the hospital’s helipad, along with other witnesses to testify for the opposition.
“There’s a pressure to fly,” Bledsoe said during Monday night’s testimony. Helicopters, he said, “are vastly over-utilized and unsafe.” Bledsoe was a paramedic before attending medical school, and said he has lost 10 friends and acquaintances in the last two years as a result of helicopter crashes.
Since Medicare increased the reimbursement for helicopter used in 2001, it opened the door for greater use and more profits, he said.
Bledsoe said that new hospitals are more likely to have a helipad built in. “The research shows that helipads generate revenue. The driving force is financial rather than a medical necessity.” There is pressure to transfer patients from one location to another, he said. “There are business reasons to keep the patient in the system. If your neighbor’s doing it, you’ve got to do it.” The cost of the helicopter could be $6.1 million, but the downstream revenue could be $62 million, he said. In addition, the patients who are transported by helicopter are more likely to be insured. “In Texas, two hospitals that are one quarter mile apart each have separate helipads,” he said.
In many cases, he said, patients could just as well be taken by ground. “You need to balance the risks and benefits of the $15,000 cost to transport by helicopter,” he said. “Most would be faster going by ground, even in New Jersey.” In many situations, he said, a helicopter shouldn’t even be considered. He noted by the time you factor in agreements between physicians at the outgoing and receiving hospitals, the weather, the transport of a patient to and from the aircraft, you’ve already taken up time. “It’s not an easy endeavor. There’s the diagnosis, the stability of the patient, the covering physician, the weather for take off. There’s more involved with a helicopter transport than by ambulance.” he said.
Although there has been a proliferation of helicopter use during the last decade, medical studies show there is no evidence of improved outcome, he said. At trauma centers, the literature is mixed, he added. Bledsoe agreed that “time is brain” when treating stroke patients at neuroscience centers such as at Overlook, but that other factors are also involved.
Overlook Attorney Bartholomew Sheehan told the zoning board that flights would be limited to five to nine a month and the helipad would be used solely for stroke victims. “It will be confined to a small, discreet number of patients,” he said.
Sheehan referred to previous testimony by pilot Steve Masi who spoke on the safety and benefits of transporting stroke patients by helicopter.
The board again asked Sheehan to produce a copy of Overlook’s master plan.

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