Houston partner Robert Wolin was quoted in an April 27, 2009, Modern Healthcare magazine article, "Air Ambulance Debate Heats Up."
According to the article, as federal regulators work on new provisions to improve the safety of air ambulances, some healthcare experts question whether the government is doing everything it can to prevent more medical transport accidents, which have sharply increased in recent years. Some government officials and lawmakers believe that more aggressive actions are needed to improve the safety of medical transport.
Many believe that regulatory intervention is long overdue. The helicopter emergency medical service, or HEMS, industry suffers from a lack of structure or governance, not to mention the fact that reimbursement for these services is poor, said Wolin. "We're having more accidents today because there's no one comprehensive regulator," said Wolin, who has worked with a number of hospitals and HEMS services.
According to the article, the FAA will be proposing new regulations by the end of 2009 or early 2010. Hospitals in the meantime could do their part to help reduce accidents by establishing better communication with the operators of these flights, Wolin said. Many hospitals engage in "helicopter shopping," where they keep dialing various HEMS operators until someone takes the flight. "Sometimes the helicopter operator will feel the pressure to take the flight even though it may not be safe, or they need the revenue," Wolin said.
Wolin suggested that hospitals have specific protocols for when an operator turns down a flight for safety reasons. As an example, the emergency department or other staff that requested the flight but had it rejected "should be required to tell the next operator that the flight had been turned down by someone." This type of disclosure could prevent more helicopters from venturing into bad weather—and endangering its occupants, he said.