Shared Health takes over Lifeflight air ambulance

Prairie Mountain Health will still be well-served with the transition of the Lifeflight critical air ambulance service to Shared Health, its chief medical officer for emergency response services said Friday.

“Western Manitoba is an area that Lifeflight services as does STARS (air ambulance),” Dr. Rob Grierson told the Sun during a conference call with reporters.

“Understandably, when you think about the type of calls that could come in, specifically in your region, sometimes the calls come in, and it starts out as a scene response that STARS may be responding to but then turns into an inter-facility transfer.

“So then when we look at it, it also depends on the nature of the patient and what resource can get to the patient the fastest. I would say that, based on your communities, there should be no change in the level of service ... the idea is to try to improve the level of service across the province with increased level of providers, but specifically for Prairie Mountain it is kind of unique because it is an area that is serviced by both providers.”

Health, Seniors and Active Living Minister Cameron Friesen announced Friday that operational responsibility and medical leadership for the Lifeflight service has moved to Shared Health.

Critical-care medical air services in Manitoba are provided by a combination of adult and child (neonatal/pediatric) transport teams within Shared Health, as well as Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service (STARS) and Lifeflight.

Clinical staff are assigned according to individual patient need and may include a combination of flight nurses with advanced critical care training and experience, physicians, advanced practice respiratory therapists and advanced care paramedics.

“Today we are announcing that we’re taking the next step when it comes to creating modern medical emergency service in the province of Manitoba,” Friesen told reporters during the call.

“I can tell you that it has always been the plan and the design to fold Lifeflight into a integrated ... air ambulance along with the other parts of the system.”

Shared Health assumed responsibility for the delivery of provincial emergency medical services and patient transport in April. The organization became responsible for the operational and medical leadership of the Lifeflight service Thursday.

“Lifeflight was developed in the mid-1980s, and it has provided good service to Manitobans,” Friesen said.

“Our goal is to create an even more consistent, safer system in service. We have not yet landed on an exact model, but I can tell you that our examination of other systems and our own has been rigorous.”

He added, “We know there are better integrated models from which we can learn. This was good for the ’80s and the ’90s and the ’2000s, but health care has changed and we feel that there are tremendous advantages that will come from the consolidation of this Lifeflight service inside Shared Health.”

Grierson agrees.

“When you at the system today versus the system 30 years ago, a large number of our calls now are done by the child health transport team,” he said. “There’s a much larger demand on calls for out of province, because people are encountering conditions now that are treatable these days with transplants and advanced procedures that may not be available in the province but require urgent or emergent transfer out of province.”

The Lifeflight program was developed in 1985 and has provided inter-facility air ambulance transport for critically ill or injured Manitobans from areas outside a 200-kilometre radius of Winnipeg. Forty per cent of the transports (in province and out of province) completed between April 1 and Oct. 23 were provided by the child (neonatal/pediatric) transport teams, which transferred to Shared Health in April.

Grierson said the transition of Lifeflight to Shared Health will provide responses tailored to the nature of the call.

“We need to match the team that’s going to respond to these patients with the patients’ needs,” he said, adding Shared Health can quickly place specialists such as respiratory therapists, advanced-care paramedics with field experience, ICU-level physicians or nurses on board the flights.

“The whole model here is to .... absolutely match the team to the patient at the right time, and the best way to co-ordinate that is under Shared Health, because we have access to all those teams.”

The Manitoba government launched a request for proposals in 2018 that will determine whether there are alternate ways to provide the air ambulance service in a more efficient manner while maintaining patient safety levels. That RFP process remains ongoing.

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