Lee County MEDSTAR grounded, will restructure
Lee County EMS, which provides emergency medical transportation in Lee County, Florida, US, announced on 21 August that it had suspended its MEDSTAR helicopter air ambulance programme with effect from 07:00 hrs that day. MEDSTAR will remain grounded for a period of six to nine months as it begins restructuring in order to gain accreditation by the Commission of Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS).
Lee County EMS, which provides emergency medical transportation in Lee County, Florida, US, announced on 21 August that it had suspended its MEDSTAR helicopter air ambulance programme with effect from 07:00 hrs that day. MEDSTAR will remain grounded for a period of six to nine months as it begins restructuring in order to gain accreditation by the Commission of Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS). A key change will be that in the future, each flight will have a medical crew of one critical care nurse and one paramedic, Lee County EMS director John Wilson told Fox News 4; previously, MEDSTAR flew with two paramedics onboard.
Kim Dickerson, Lee County deputy director of public safety and EMS chief, explained: “We decided this was the best thing to do for our programme … we see a lot of patients who are sicker than we typically were seeing.”
Already, a dozen former flight paramedics have been moved to other duties and four more are no longer working for Lee County EMS, said Wilson. He added: “The current team that was in there was not going to get us there, so we let our director of operations go. Since we don’t have a director of operations, we had to let the pilots go.”
According to officials, Lee County will be served by helicopters from neighbouring areas until MEDSTAR takes off again in 2013.