CAA: GA News, "Ambulances by air thrive in rural Kansas areas"

["Stephen Irwin" <Stephen.Irwin@pmail.net>]

Sunday, April 16, 2000

Ambulances by air thrive in rural areas
Statewide aerial medical services bring a high level of care to Kansans.
By Dennis Pearce
The Wichita Eagle


Kelly Cohoon believes he is still alive because of the air ambulance network
serving rural Kansas.

In January 1998, the Dodge City dentist was accidentally shot while pheasant
hunting near Ness City. He became one of more than 1,600 Kansans who are
transported by air to get emergency medical care every year.

Cohoon had put his shotgun in the bed of a pickup truck and was sitting in
the seat eating lunch. When his golden retriever, Shaq, jumped into the bed,
he stepped on the gun and it went off. The shot punched through the cab of
the truck into Cohoon's back.

His friends rushed him to the Ness City Hospital where he received a blood
transfusion. LifeWatch, one of the state's air ambulance services, flew to
the airport and took Cohoon and his wife, Debby, to Wichita. He was then
treated by trauma surgeons at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St.
Francis Campus.

"There's no question. It was definitely life-saving," he said. He isn't sure
he would have survived a road ambulance ride to Wichita.

Saving lives

Cohoon's story is remarkable, in part, because it is almost routine.

Cohoon received the emergency medical care that premature babies, and heart,
stroke or car wreck victims in rural Kansas get because of a network of
airplanes and helicopters that transport them at high speed, day or night,
fair weather or foul.

"When time is of the essence, no other mode can deliver that except air
travel," said Mike Armour, director of the aviation division of the Kansas
Department of Transportation.

As of now, there are two major providers of fixed-wing air ambulance service
in Kansas.

One is Ballard's Aviation Inc., which operates as EagleMed out of Wichita's
Mid-Continent Airport. It contracts with Via Christi Regional Medical
Center.

The other is MidWest Corporate Aviation, which operates as LifeWatch out of
Jabara Airport on Wichita's east side. But MidWest's contract with Wichita's
Wesley Medical Center for fixed-wing air ambulance service expires May 1.

In late March, Wesley told MidWest that it would not renew the contract. As
of mid-April, Wesley had not picked a replacement provider.

Separately, Wesley owns a helicopter and contracts with a Dallas company to
operate it.

The airports

The air ambulance business couldn't exist without the state's rural
airports.

But their role in rural medical care goes beyond the air ambulance business.
Those airports also are used by doctors who rely on their private airplanes
to bring their medical specialties to smaller communities.

The combination of rural airports, air ambulances and flying doctors brings
a level of care to rural Kansas that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

In addition to the lives that are saved, the rural airports have a tangible
economic impact on the state's health care system, says Michael Babcock, a
Kansas State University professor of economics. He recently calculated that
impact in a state DOT-sponsored study.

His conclusion: The rural airport system contributes about $20.8 million
every year to the state's economy in related medical benefits. The figure
represents the fees that doctors charge the hospitals to perform the
services; the money that was spent to support the doctors at the hospitals
(such as supplies, salaries, upkeep); and what the air ambulance companies
are paid.

"I was a little bit surprised at how big an operation it is," Babcock said.

Local airports not only support the air ambulance services, they also allow
flying doctors to give rural Kansans a level of medical care that would be
nearly impossible over the highways of a state that is 400 miles east to
west and 200 miles north to south.

Babcock found that nearly 50 flying doctors practicing in the state bring
their medical services to rural areas.

Babcock found that doctors provide 45 different medical services in 22
different medical specialties around the state. "Any medical care you can
get in Wichita, you can get in Johnson (in far western Kansas) because of
airports and aviation," he said.

Usable airports

Babcock's study, the last of a trilogy he did on the condition and need for
airports in the state, gives Kansas hard numbers, "verification of what we
heard was the situation at rural airports," Armour said.

He discovered that air ambulances, usually Beech King Air turboprop
airplanes, can only operate out of 54 of the state's 142 airports; 78 of the
airports do not meet safety or operational standards. Their runways are
turf, or are not long enough or wide enough.

Besides two airplanes in Wichita, EagleMed bases an airplane in Hays and
Garden City. It also operates a helicopter.

LifeWatch bases a King Air in Wichita and Dodge City, and a helicopter in
Wichita. LifeWatch handled 1,150 patients last year, said LifeWatch director
George Figgins. Most were heart patients and accident victims.

Patients flown by both EagleMed and LifeWatch are taken to any of Wichita's
hospitals. "Thirty percent of our patients are taken to Via Christi,"
Figgins said.

Another Kansas hospital that is involved directly in air service is Goodland
Regional Medical Center, which owns a King Air. The plane is used to
transport both patients and doctors.

In Goodland, the air service is definitely vital to the area, said Jim
Chaddic, chief executive of Goodland Regional Medical Center.

On a slow week, maybe three patients will be transported to or from the
Goodland hospital, he said, and as many as 10 when things get busy.

Until recently, most emergency patients were flown to Wichita, Kansas City
or Denver. But the Hays Regional Medical Center is converting itself into a
regional medical powerhouse, to the point of doing open-heart surgery.

It also has been doing pioneering work in telemedicine and has become a
focal point for doctors from all around the state to fly in and practice.

So now, said Iva Ballard, "we are carrying patients to Hays."

Rural areas increasingly have problems keeping doctors, Armour said. The
statewide network makes sure critical cases don't go untended.

"I think it is really important to keep that segment of transportation needs
filled," he said.


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