EDMONTON – Thirty-six northern Alberta doctors have issued an open letter to Albertans warning there will be “fatal consequences” if the province goes ahead with plans to reroute medevac flights to the Edmonton International Airport in two weeks.
Provincial health officials reject the allegations in the letter, which urges the government to suspend plans to redirect emergency flights from Edmonton’s City Centre Airport to the international airport.
“For the critically ill and injured people of the north, the extra transport time will result in needless deaths and disability,” reads the letter, which is signed by doctors from Grande Prairie, Lac La Biche, Fort McMurray, Peace River and Edmonton.
“Moving the medevacs … is unnecessary, costly, and will have fatal consequences.”
City council voted in 2009 to close the City Centre Airport, and the province asked the Health Quality Council of Alberta to review options for medevac services. In a 2011 report, the HQCA issued 18 recommendations for a new medevac base at Edmonton International Airport.
The report said rerouting medevac planes through the EIA would increase transit time to the University of Alberta Hospital by 18 minutes and by 35 minutes to Royal Alexandra Hospital. The province plans to address this concern by using STARS air ambulance.
Dr. Richard Birkill is the community medical director for Lac La Biche and member of the Save Our Medevac Services group (SOS), which published the letter. He typically treats victims of oilfield accidents, Highway 63 collisions, heart attacks and strokes, and he is not convinced the province’s plan will work.
“We are going to lose a lot of patients,” Birkill said. “It is heart-wrenching to think that all those critical patients, that I could have saved, I won’t be able to save them.”
Birkill said the plan to use STARS for critical patients is flawed because the helicopter won’t be exclusively dedicated to the medevac service. He said the province should expropriate the City Centre Airport lands and continue to operate medevac services downtown.
Dr. Kerry Pawluski, president of SOS, said the province should continue to operate medevac flights out of the City Centre Airport for the next 15 or 20 years, until the city permits residential development. By then, he said the northern population will have grown enough to warrant its own major hospital capable of treating critical health issues.
“We’re set up for failure,” Pawluski said. “Delays mean death. Delays mean significant disability.”
Keith Wilson, SOS legal counsel, said the full-page advertisement in the Journal Monday was paid for using donations from doctors, medevac pilots and supporters, including $5,000 from Lac La Biche County. He said the organization is neither affiliated with nor funded by backers of Envision Edmonton, the group of Edmonton aviation businessmen and advocates who spearheaded a campaign to keep the airport open.
Dr. Ian Phelps is senior medical director of Emergency Medical Services for Alberta Health Services and a doctor at Northern Lights Regional Hospital in Fort McMurray.
He said that of the 3,000 patients who fly to Edmonton on medevac each year, 480 are serious “red” cases and of those, 50 have time-sensitive medical conditions.
The province estimates five patients will need rapid transit to hospital each month, and Phelps said that’s when STARS will be used. The STARS trip will take between 10 and 12 minutes, comparable to transit times from the City Centre Airport.
He noted that 62 northern patients have been diverted to the Edmonton International Airport since 2010 and none suffered as a result.
Phelps acknowledged the doctors’ concerns, saying “they want to see the proof, the evidence.
“We’ve outlined our strategy, and we’ve committed to go back and review any poor patient outcomes. It’s up to us to make sure our plans work.”
Health Minister Fred Horne said expropriating the airport land would cost an estimated $2 billion and the province hasn’t considered the option. “I have no concerns about patient safety or quality of care as a result of this move,” Horne said Sunday.
Horne highlighted the state-of-the-art, six-bed $6.5 million health facility the province is building at the international airport and the $25 million the province has spent upgrading helicopter landing pads at major hospitals.
“There are a large number of people who just don’t want to see the City Centre (Airport) closed,” Horne said. “We made a decision to respect city council’s position that they’re closing the airport, and we’ve made plans accordingly.”
Horne said there is no truth to suggestions that government planes will continue to fly out of the City Centre Airport until 2014. He said government air services will be transferred to the international airport in March as well.
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