By Tom Murphy, Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
Medical helicopters are filling Indiana air space in an unprecedented growth spurt that has sparked a heated debate in some parts about overuse and quality of care.
However, that debate has bypassed Fort Wayne so far, where Parkview Hospital’s Samaritan helicopters share only friendly skies with new competitor Lutheran Air.
PHI Air Medical Group Indiana, a subsidiary of Phoenix-based PHI Air Medical Services, opened bases in West Lafayette, Anderson and Columbus last year. It joined other newcomers like Missouri-based Air Evac Lifeteam, which first landed in Indiana in 2001; and Louisville’s StatCare, which opened shop last year in Seymour.
Lutheran Air also entered the market last year, when the Lutheran Health Network established a helicopter program to help transport critically ill patients from its seven regional hospitals to Fort Wayne.
All told, 16 providers of air medical transport fly 26 aircraft in Indiana, according to the state Department of Homeland Security. Ten years ago, five Indiana-based programs operated 10 helicopters.
And the growth is continuing.
PHI, which operates more than 75 aircraft in 11 states, announced last week it would provide critical care air medical transport services for St. Vincent Health’s 16 facilities. The St.Vincent Health alliance will result in a fourth base on the St.Vincent Indianapolis Hospital campus.
In addition, the company is working on three or four other “very large health care relationships,” said Gary Stromberg, PHI Air Medical’s regional director for Indiana and Kentucky. He declined to elaborate.
Experts call this growth a reflection of a national trend that has hit other parts of the country before arriving in Indiana. This trend makes some Indiana health care providers uncomfortable.
Helicopter transports should stick to a narrow focus, according to Dan Evans, the CEO of Indianapolis-based Clarian Health Partners, which runs the long-standing LifeLine program.
“These helicopters are for people who’ve been in terrible automobile accidents, twisted piles of steel, and they’re cut out by EMTs and flown to a Level 1 trauma center,” he said.
Expanding the focus, he believes, can lead to the overuse that drives up health care costs. One transport can cost several thousand dollars.
However representatives of Lutheran Air saw a definite need to look beyond car wrecks when they launched their program in May 2004 with one helicopter based in Fort Wayne.
They started their program to extend the high-level, tertiary care Lutheran offers in Fort Wayne out to the regional hospitals. About 90 percent of Lutheran Air’s calls are inter-facility transports, said Lutheran Health Network CEO Tom Miller.
“Much of the reason we have gotten into this service line is really focused on being a strong heart hospital,” he said.
For instance, a patient suffering from heart problems arrived at one of Lutheran’s regional hospitals on a hot, muggy day this year, said Kevin Wellman, Lutheran Hospital’s critical care transport coordinator.
Doctors summoned the helicopter, and it delivered the patient to a cath lab at the main hospital in 33 minutes. Ground transportation would have taken well over an hour.
“That’s one example of many of how air medical transport can reduce transport time to get these patients to the tertiary care centers where they need to be,” he said.
Aside from cardiology, Miller also noted that Lutheran’s Fort Wayne hospitals serve as regional centers for pediatric care and burn treatment and they want to extend those services out to regional hospitals as well.
Lutheran found a ready-made complement to its helicopter program at Parkview Hospital. Parkview launched its Samaritan I helicopter in 1989 and added a second chopper 10 years later, basing it in Rochester.
Unlike Lutheran Air, most of the Samaritan calls (about 70 percent) involve trauma. Cardiac cases rank second at about 20 percent, according to Parkview officials. They say their business has seen no negative impact since Lutheran Air took off.
In fact, Parkview saw a record-breaking month last July with 140 flights, according to Cathy Harris, the hospital’s director of flight and emergency medical services.
Wellman said Lutheran averages about 30 flights a month.
The Parkview and Lutheran programs back up each other when the need arises, Wellman said. Representatives from each also get together to review Allen County flights and flight requests to help guard against overuse.
Neither program would be considered a cash cow. Lutheran spends more than a million dollars annually on its helicopter program, and Parkview spends about $2.3 million. Leaders of both programs say they operate hoping to break even.
“The flight program was not put in place as a revenue generator,” Parkview spokeswoman Karen Belcher said. “It is a high-tech, high-quality community service we provide based on need.”
Grace Housholder also contributed to this story.
Copyright 2005, KPC Media Group Inc.