Oct 6, 2008 6:42 pm US/Eastern
Maryland Medevac Guidelines Under Review
BALTIMORE (WJZ) ―
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Questions continue about the use of Maryland's Medevac helicopters.
Questions continue about the use of Maryland's Medevac helicopters. Are they sent to emergencies where they are not really needed?
Derek Valcourt reports a national panel of experts will try to answer that question.
There has been a lot of criticism since that Medevac accident but the doctors at Shock Trauma say the lives saved by the helicopters are a testimony to Maryland's Medevac system.
Jordan Wells, 18, is the only survivor pulled from the wreckage of a helicopter accident that killed four people when it crashed on a foggy evening in a wooded area of Prince George's County.
"We got to talk to Jordan for the first time today. They took the tubes out," said her father, Scott Wells.
While Wells recovers, leading emergency doctors defend the state's Medevac program under criticism that helicopters are used too frequently, putting crews and patients in unnecessary danger.
"Is the system perfect? No. Can the system be improved? Of course," said Dr. Thomas Scalea with Shock Trauma.
In the interest of improving the system, state emergency leaders will review the accident involving Trooper 2. They'll convene a panel to review procedures on how the decision to use a chopper is made and they'll begin requiring EMS workers at an accident scene to make a brief consultation phone call with the hospital on whether a helicopter is really needed.
"What we're going to be doing in this consultation is to give them time to put their thoughts together and share it with a physician at the trauma center," said Robert Bass, executive director of the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems.
Doctors acknowledge that EMS workers take a "better safe than sorry" approach to requesting helicopter assistance and they strongly resist the idea of privatizing Medevac services to save taxpayer dollars.
"How many people are we going to allow to die because we took the best system in the world and watered it down?" Scalea said.
Critics say that about 50% of all the patients who are flown into a trauma center end up being able to walk out on their own within 24 hours.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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