EagleMed suffers second fatal crash of 2013
On 11 June, an EagleMed air ambulance helicopter crashed in Talihina, Oklahoma, US, injuring the three crew members and killing the 49-year-old patient onboard. The crash was the second fatal accident for the company in 2013.
On 11 June, an EagleMed air ambulance helicopter crashed in Talihina, Oklahoma, US, injuring the three crew members and killing the 49-year-old patient onboard. The crash was the second fatal accident for the company in 2013, which is a subsidiary of Air Medical Group Holdings. On 22 February, an EagleMed AS350 B3 helicopter crashed en route to pick up a patient, resulting in the deaths of the pilot and flight nurse and injuring the flight paramedic onboard. (www.airmedandrescue.com/story/eaglemed-helicopter-crash-kills-two).
Local media reports quoted a spokesperson for Choctaw National Health Services, who stated that the latest accident occurred immediately after take-off, adding: “It happened … literally yards from our emergency department.”
The helicopter’s pilot and flight paramedic were named as Kip Sorensen and Ryan Setzkorn, who received treatment for minor injuries and were then released, according to reports. The crew’s flight nurse was critically injured; her condition was said to be ‘serious but stable’ after she was taken to Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, said news agency UPI.
EagleMed holds accreditation with the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS), and CAMTS executive director Eileen Frazer has said that following the latest accident, the Commission will look into the crash to try to determine whether there is a pattern of unsafe conditions linking the two fatal accidents this year and a previous crash in July 2010 that killed an Eaglemed pilot and nurse. (www.airmedandrescue.com/content/eaglemed-crash-kills-pilot-and-nurse).