I’m among the many Gilroyans who are great admirers of CALSTAR,
California Shock-Trauma Air Rescue, our local helicopter ambulance
service.
I’m among the many Gilroyans who are great admirers of CALSTAR, California Shock-Trauma Air Rescue, our local helicopter ambulance service. In addition to providing a needed service to anyone without regard to ability to pay, CALSTAR is an excellent corporate citizen, providing, for example, the opening for our annual Memorial Day Parade each year, and always displaying their helicopters in the park for the kids to admire.
I come by this admiration honestly. I served in the Vietnam war, and that’s when the air ambulance concept came into it’s own, although it started on a small scale in Korea. Medevac helicopter crewmen were the widely-admired crazy men of Vietnam. Everyone knew that if you called for a medevac chopper, call sign “Dustoff” was light on the skids and asking for a vector almost before you unkeyed the microphone, without regard to any danger to themselves.
So, I was a little puzzled by the letter to the editor by Daniel Garcia, of Gilroy, complaining about the $14,000 bill he received when he was flown to a hospital by CALSTAR. A follow-on letter by Dan Moyles in last week’s paper was also interesting.
My initial thought about Mr. Garcia’s letter was that the only thing worse than having to pay a 14K air ambulance bill is not being around to pay it.
As to Mr. Moyles‚ letter, my thought was, what’s a “wrist injury” – Is it a Colles fracture, the common one any resident or intern could diagnose by x-ray, reduce, and set in plaster? Or was it a compound comminuted fracture of the radius and ulna, with attendant nerve or blood vessel damage, that needed operating room time by a hand surgeon or orthopod?
In the latter, the two-hour interval Moyles describes may not be uncalled for. Unless an injury is immediately life-threatening, the wise physician takes a good medical history from the patient, administers pain and other pre-operative medications, studies the x-rays, and perhaps consults with colleagues as to treatment.
The thing about these injuries that don’t seem life-threatening is that occasionally, they are. Everyone who has worked in a battlefield triage unit or a big-city ER has seen an apparently uninjured patient arrive walking, talking, lucid, and free of pain, and then crash and die several hours later from, for example, a ruptured spleen or bleeding inside the skull.
For these reasons, it becomes apparent to me that an abundance of caution is being used to call in CALSTAR. I agree with this in principle, yet also concur with Moyles that a public disclosure of the protocol that sets the turbines burning and the rotors turning would be advantageous.
I’m sure that it isn’t any big secret, and if we all knew by reading a column by a CALSTAR employee, perhaps bolstered by some input from Phil King, our chief paramedic, what circumstances or injuries are needed to call up CALSTAR, it would put this minor controversy to rest.
I do have a question of my own, though. I was listening to the scanner a month or so ago when CALSTAR was called away for an auto accident on the freeway at Tenth Street. As the pilot approached, he advised the emergency responders on the ground that he had capacity aboard for only 150 kilos (330 pounds).
Huh? I was aboard a Marine Corps Huey in Vietnam that had a pilot, a co-pilot, two corpsmen (one of whom was me) and eight stretcher patients secured in the back, and we managed to take off and land without giving anyone the willies.
I happen to know the CALSTAR helo based here is a modern Messerschmidt design with room for four crew. Why is the load-lifting capacity so much less than 35 years ago? I know helicopters are notorious maintenance hogs and parts are expensive, so I have to ask: Would buying old California ANG Hueys save money and add capacity?
Excess capacity in an air ambulance is a definite plus. So, if someone decides to do a column, could you answer that as well, please?
In closing, let me emphasize: I am not in any way denigrating the service of the men and women who put their lives on the line to save others. CALSTAR is a wonderful community asset. But, I think the time to publicly discuss the protocol of it’s usage is upon us.
Guest columnist Robert Dillon is a Gilroy City Councilman who loves writing, convertibles and spaniels. E-mail: rt******@****ic.com.
