As makattak said, *the* ambulance that could provide this transport was on another call.
There are two main children's hospitals in my area. they both have NICU's as well as isolette equipped ambulances. I'm not sure about the one, but the other hospital has one neonatal ambulance on site 24/7. If that one goes out, there's a backup (as long as there's a second neonatal team in hospital) less than 30 minutes away. When the first team goes out, the backup unit moves to the hospital and the backup team gets called in if they're on call (and not already in house). There are also a couple of other hospitals with NICU's that don't have dedicated transport teams, but use the transport teams from the two children's hospitals.
As a backup to all of this, if the patient is too critical or too far away, the local air ambulance service can also transport these teams directly from either children's hospital (both have helipads) to wherever the patient is at, and fly them back directly to the children's hospital. And we can also do ground to one of the local airports for fixed wing transport to hospitals outside the helicopters range.
Yes, in the quoted article, Carillion does have sufficient NICU space to cover the region. But there are times when you need the NICU *now* and even though we have all the transport capability in our region, there are still instances where those patients need the capabilities of the NICU before the transport team even gets there. And the reality is that some babies, no matter what, are simply too fragile or too premature to survive, regardless of what care may be available. But I believe it's unconscionable to have EVERYONE that testifies say that "yes, adding a small (8 bed) NICU to our hospital is a good idea" but have the proposal rejected because the other competing hospital doesn't want to lose the exclusivity of having the only NICU in the region. Part of their testimony, in fact, was that "if Lewis-Gale were to have a NICU, patients would not choose our hospital" (paraphrased). THAT is not a sufficient reason to prevent another hospital from having a NICU.
