The closure, announced over a year ago, took place March 15 as part of the phased closure of the airport. Since then, medevacs have been landing at the Edmonton International Airport, located south of city limits near Leduc, Alta., creating a longer transit time for patients en route to the city’s hospitals. This change has caused a great deal of concern among northern doctors and medevac providers, including Western Air Rescue (WAR), who services the Jasper/Hinton area.
“We are disappointed with the inability to fly to the municipal airport in Edmonton,” Krista Umble, owner and administration manager of WAR, said last week, “and we have expressed our concerns for patients and future patients that we fly.”
Although Umble assures patient care is WAR’s focus, she said she’s concerned about the extra time they will now spend travelling to a hospital.
“Since March 15, WAR has transitioned to the international airport and once we arrive at the international via King Air 200 (a fixed-wing air ambulance), we transport our patients via [ground] ambulance. The patients unfortunately will have to spend more time in the back of our ambulance to get to the receiving hospital.”
According to Alberta Health Services, in the 2012 calendar year, 34 patients flew out of Jasper in a fixed-wing air ambulance. Candace Davis has used the service three times in the last 13 years.
The first time she was six and a half months pregnant and her body was rejecting her baby.
“I had HELLP syndrome,” she said. “That means you have to get the baby out within 24 hours or else the mother will die.”
The second time, she had a broken back and couldn’t drive all the way to Edmonton on the bumpy highway. The final time, in 2008, she was with her 10-month-old child who had human parainfluenza virus—a common respiratory illness in infants and young children that can lead to severe lower respiratory illnesses.
Of all her three experiences, Davis said she received “fantastic care” and everything turned out.
According to the Save Our Medevac Service Society—a group of lobbyists comprised of doctors, air ambulance pilots and rural health care advocates—landing at the international airport, as opposed to the City Centre Airport, will add upwards of 20 minutes to a patient’s transit time to either Royal Alexandra Hospital or the University of Alberta Hospital.
Doctors opposed to the closure have argued this extra time can mean the difference between life and death for some patients.
“To save lives doctors need timely and effective medevac services to get our patients to trauma, heart, obstetric and other specialists at the Alex and U of A hospitals,” Dr. Kerry Pawluski, an Edmonton medical doctor, stated in a press release.
Pawluski is the president of the Save Our Medevac Services Society—a group that called on the Health Minister to suspend the closure of the City Centre Airport earlier this month.
He, along with 35 other doctors across northern and rural Alberta, wrote and signed an open letter expressing their concern. Of those doctors, none were from Jasper.
Despite the efforts of lobbyists, medevac services switched to Edmonton International Airport on March 15, where there is now a 3,600-square-metre air ambulance base with six temporary beds for receiving patients. This base will allow patient transfers to occur in the hangar instead of on the tarmac, as was done at the City Centre Airport.
In a press release dated March 13, Health Minister Fred Horne assured northern and rural residents “patient safety and care will not be compromised” by the change of location. “This new state-of-the-art medevac base will provide the timely treatment and transport that critical and non-critical patients need. The fastest possible access to Edmonton area hospitals is assured.”
