Air ambulance changes designed to improve service quality

The Hawke's Bay Rescue Helicopter Trust crew assists with more than 300 missions in the region each year. Photo/supplied

Proposed changes to air ambulance and rescue helicopter services will be likely to improve the efficiency of the Hawke's Bay Rescue Helicopter Trust operations, says general manager Ian Wilmot.

A co-design project led by the Ministry of Health, ACC and district health boards has proposed creating three regions - one in the South Island, one in the Auckland/Northland area and another covering the rest of the North Island.

In the North Island, the helicopter bases were proposed to be at Hamilton, Tauranga, Gisborne, Wellington, Palmerston North, New Plymouth and Hawke's Bay.

Bases in Taupo and Rotorua had been removed in the proposal, operated by the Philips Search and Rescue Trust, which intended to ask that Taupo be re-included.

The project came about due to rising demand for air ambulance services, with the aim to have a national integrated network that covered the whole country, providing around the clock services that linked in with other emergency services.

Another objective was to run an open and competitive procurement process to enable current and other potential providers to bid to deliver the service into the future.

Mr Wilmot said the proposed changes would not affect Hawke's Bay, which had retained its service, and that the trust was supportive of them.

"The changes will improve the standard of service, and rationalise the services across the sector so that providers or charitable trusts will be working together more - we're very positive about it."

He said some of the benefits could include the standardisation of equipment, potentially allowing operators to share spare parts for aircraft, as well as shared training opportunities for pilots, crewmen and paramedics.

"We never had any fears we would lose Hawke's Bay - we always saw it as justified as we are busy enough to require it and have some natural geographic boundaries which means a helicopter here is always needed."

Other changes proposed included moving to twin engine helicopters only (rather than single and twin engine aircraft) and increasing crewing of paramedics and doctors.

Mr Wilmot said this would not affect the Hawke's Bay trust as it only had twin-engine aircraft, and it had been operating to the specification of having two paramedics on board all along.

Air ambulance providers and trusts have until May this year to give their feedback, and the new upgraded services were expected to be operating by November this year.

Each year the Hawke's Bay Rescue Helicopter Trust crew assists with more than 300 missions within the region, with over 80 per cent of those missions providing urgent medical assistance at accident scenes or inter-hospital transfers for the critically ill.