BY MARC CHASE, Times of Northwest Indiana
Medical helicopter accidents in Indiana and Illinois accounted for 17.2 percent of all chopper crashes or accidents and three of the 11 helicopter-related deaths in those two states between 2000 and the present, a Times' analysis of FAA records shows.
And Thursday's crash of a medical helicopter on the rooftop of Porter Valparaiso Hospital Campus is just the latest in a growing trend of such accidents nationwide, prompting a federal push for tighter safety regulations.
In Indiana and Illinois alone, five of the 29 helicopter crashes or accidents between 2000 and the present involved medical evacuation helicopters. In the previous five-year period, between 1995 and 1999, medical helicopters accounted for none of the 17 crashes within those two states.
The head of industry trade group, Virginia-based Association of Air Medical Services, said a nationwide spike in medical helicopter crashes could be attributed to a rapidly growing business serving a changing hospital industry that requires some critical patients to be transported over longer distances.
Other aviation experts attribute the increase to the nature of the business: Because critical patients must be moved, medical helicopter pilots are more likely to fly in weather and visibility conditions that might preclude other chopper pilots from taking off.
In either case, the National Transportation Safety Board has reported a move to recommend enhanced safety equipment -- including the use of night-vision goggles by medical helicopter crews, more pilot training and tighter regulations for emergency medical helicopters.
FAA officials have said the number of such crashes attributable to human error shows a need for enhanced training for medical helicopter pilots, crew and other hospital personnel.
Three of the five medical helicopter accidents in Illinois and Indiana in the past five years were determined by FAA and NTSB investigators to have been caused by human mistakes, with two crashes attributed to pilot errors. In the third, a hospital security guard walked into a spinning tail rotor at a Quincy, Ill., hospital.
One flight -- which originated in Gary and was forced to perform an emergency landing in Wilmington, Ill., in 2003 -- probably occurred because of a manufacturing flaw on a tail rotor part, federal investigators determined. The cause of the recent crash in Valparaiso remains under investigation.
Dawn Mancuso, executive director of the Association of Air Medical Services, said the increase in accidents could correlate with the rapidly growing medical helicopter industry. Her organization estimates that since 2000, the number medical helicopters has grown by 50 percent, to about 750 from 500.
"As the number of transports increase, the risk also increase because the exposure increases," Mancuso said.
Mancuso said her industry's growth has been prompted in part because many hospitals -- particularly in smaller areas -- have scaled back on the types of services they provide because of budget constraints. That means that many critical patients have to be transported greater distances -- something helicopters do well and quickly.
The industry experienced a similar spike in medical helicopter accidents in the mid-1980s, also a time when the number of air ambulance flights was experiencing rapid growth, said Eileen Frazer, executive director of the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems. Frazer's nonprofit group conducts voluntary safety audits of medical helicopter services.
Tighter standards and regulations offered during that time period helped bring those accident numbers down, Frazer said. The recent spikes could be a sign that more regulations are needed, she said.
Copyright © 1996-2005 nwitimes.com.