^^^If I am ever in an accident, I hope I am conscious enough to refuse helicopter transport when it is not needed to save my life. In perhaps the majority of cases, ground transport is adequate, there is quite the loss ratio of air medical transports leading to everyone being killed, and most insurance companies will not pay for the helicopter, leaving the patient with tens of thousands of transport bills. In our area, Airlift Northwest is the main operator of air-borne medical transport, and they are very much a profit-making organization. They have a reputation for not compromising on the bill, and they will send you to collection and drive you into bankruptcy without a second thought. They lost a helicopter and all souls aboard a few years back when the copter went down in Puget Sound while transporting a pregnant woman in non-emergent labor. Airlift Northwest stationed a helicopter and a fixed-wing transport at the airport near me a few years ago.
Oh man, do I have a story on this one. Years ago while I was still an EMT in the field, we got tapped for a call out in rural Clackamas County. Little bit of background on how our system works in that county, the first unit/responders on scene are Person In Charge. They run the scene. Other counties, if fire gets there first, they run the scene only until my company arrives on scene, then the transporting unit becomes PIC (since we're going to be in charge in the ambulance anyways). The call is at a horse barn, group of kids from one of the schools for kids with behavioral issues was out there doing a field day as part of their therapy. Girl "falls" off a horse, claims she lost consciousness. This is in an indoor arena, and I kid you not, there must have been a foot of loosely packed sawdust on the ground. No way in hell she lost consciousness. She also is claiming that she can't see (bullcrap - she's tracking us with her eyes as we're walking around her) but whatever. She's being a drama queen, attention seeking, we'll take her to the hospital because, well, the school is pretty much demanding that she get cleared medically before she's allowed to return to the school. CYA, whatever. Volunteer fire company is first on scene, and these vollies... Well.... Some volunteers are great. They have a metric ton of experience, good clinical skills, etc. I swear, the officer on this volunteer company was greener than the grass we were standing on.... And the rest of the engine company hadn't even sprouted yet. They had activated LifeFlight (not just standby, but get the bird in the air) as we arrived on scene. My lead on the ambulance was a paramedic since pretty much the invention of the term.... We get on scene, look inside at the arena floor, look at the girl (not even a scratch or bump on her) pretty much as the EMT's on the engine are getting ready to get her on the backboard, and the officer is activating the rotorheads... At this point, she's realizing that she's bitten off more than she can chew, and magically can see, etc. Still claiming she lost consciousness though. Girl was committed to this path and didn't know how to get off it.
I know she's lying. My lead knows she's lying. The staff know she's lying. The officer on the engine declares "SHE'S A TRAUMA SYSTEM ENTRY!"
*crap*
My lead tries taking the officer to the side to have a "chat". Nope, not happening. It's his patient, his call, she's a trauma entry, and per protocol (we were more than 30 minutes away from a trauma center by ground) he's flying her.
*crapcrapcrap*
So, girl gets packaged up to fly. Backboard, c-collar (those were done by the fire EMT'S), bilateral IV's, wired up to the cardiac monitor, the whole shooting match. Now, in our system, once the helo gets in radio range of the crew (usually about 3-5 minutes from the scene) we give two reports. The first is to the pilot, giving the landing zone info, and the second is to the flight nurse, giving the patient info. So this officer is all sorts of self important as he gives a pretty dang good LZ report to the pilot, and then starts to give the patient report to the RN. He kinda flubs that one a little, being he was so green he needed watering. So the nurse asks for the patients GCS (Glascow Coma Scale, a pretty handy tool for quickly determining just how sick a patient is - a corpse has a GCS of 3, someone walking talking and totally normal has a GCS of 15). He replies, shockingly confident to the rest of us with a clue, that the patient has a GCS of 15. "FIFTEEN!?!?!?" comes the suddenly aggravated sounding nurse back over the radio. "LifeFlight out. We'll see you on the ground in 3 minutes." Officer finally starts to get a clue that he may have possibly missed something.
Whirlybird lands, nurse comes storming out of the helo and starts looking for whoever is in charge. She zeros in on my lead, who raises his hands and points at the officer from the engine... Now, I'm not entirely sure what was said, because the helo was still running while the flight paramedic came over to check on the patient. But there was shouting. There was gesticulating. There was finger pointing. Pretty sure I heard something that sounded like "trucking midget"....... But like I said, it may have been something else, because that helicopter is kinda loud.
Lil' miss drama queen gets loaded on the bird (they burned all that Jet A getting over here, they're not going back empty). And little miss drama queen's family got a $15,000 helicopter bill because she wanted attention. Well, she got it, in spades.
Personally, I think the officer on that engine company should have had to pay at least half of it. But that's just my opinion.
