SIDNEY– Soon the chances of survival after a traumatic accident or other dire medical emergency will rise, thanks to a new helicopter base at the Sidney Airport. It’s expected to cut aerial response times to local emergencies in half.
“The average time to wait now for a Mercy Flight helicopter out of Marcellus or for a Guthrie Air helicopter out of Pennsylvania on average is at least 20 minutes. Soon though the ETA (estimated time of arrival) with the helicopter in Sidney can cut a line right through the middle of the county and be in Otselic Valley in about 12 minutes,” said Chenango County Emergency Management Deputy Director Matthew L. Beckwith.
The new helicopter service is part of the Air Methods Corporation’s efforts to expand into areas of New York State that have gaps in coverage, explained the company’s business manager, Jonathan Gryniuk. The company funded a needs assessment study of emergency aerial coverage in rural New York in 2009 which resulted in the company organizing two new sites of operation.
“We wanted to find areas where we could place aircraft closer to the communities in need,” said Gryniuk. “With crews already nearby we’ve basically cut down on half the trip it would take other responders to get there from outside the area.”
Currently Air Methods Corporation operates four existing Life Net of New York bases in Albany, Wallkill, Glen and Harris as well as operating the Guthrie Air helicopter in Sayre, Pa. The company recently announced that two new EMS helicopter bases would soon be operational in Hornell and Sidney by sometime in late February.
“The greatest benefit to this rural community is more rapid access to high level care than they have had in the past. Flight time from Sidney to Norwich is 15 nautical miles, or about a seven and a half minute flight,” Gryniuk said.
Those 10 extra minutes can become a life saver when transporting victims to the three main hospitals able to handle serious trauma patients. The closest level two trauma centers are the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, which is about a 21 minute flight and the Wilson Memorial Regional Medical Center in Johnson City, about a 22 minute flight. The closest level one trauma center is a 27 minute flight away at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, which is also the only pediatric trauma center in the region, explained Gryniuk.
“In the EMS world, what they have consistently figured out is that in the first, golden hour, statistics show that if an injured party or patients can get to a trauma center within that time, their chances of survival are much higher. After that hour passes, the chances of survival decrease significantly,” said Beckwith.
Beckwith said crews would often put the helicopter on “hot standby” when responding to a serious medical emergency and the first crews on the scene decide if there’s a need for air transport. The standing helicopter, already fueled and with crews prepared, could then leave the launch pad and arrive at an accident scene at nearly the same time crew were working to remove victims.
“Usually it takes about 10 to 15 minutes for our responders to get there and if it’s an accident, then they may have to extract a person from a vehicle. Cutting you out can take up to 20 more minutes. A recent accident in Oxford took over an hour to remove the victim. As these response times start adding up, you can see how a just a 10 minute window of time could become crucial in those first 60 minutes. What can literally happen is the helicopter service can be hovering over the scene at about the same time the crews are starting to cut people free,” said Beckwith.
Gryniuk said the company would be maintaining service at the Sidney site 24 hours a day, seven days a week and would be staffed by an EMS pilot, flight nurse and flight paramedic. He said the company was in the process of hiring four full-time positions in each of those three disciplines.