Nova Scotia has unveiled a new aircraft that’ll be responsible for transporting non-critical care patients from Yarmouth and Sydney to Halifax.
The first trips are scheduled for sometime next week.
In a release on Friday morning, the province said the new Emergency Health Services (EHS) LifeFlight airplane will look to free up paramedics and ambulances to better respond to local emergency calls. The say the new plane is expected to reduce wait times and save patients hours of road travel.
“The demand on emergency health services is growing and the best place for ambulances and paramedics to be is in their communities,” said Michelle Thompson, the province’s minister of health, in a statement.
“This new plane will also drastically reduce the time it takes for patients to access the healthcare they need and return home sooner.”
Travel by plane between Yarmouth and Sydney to Halifax is expected to take about an hour, in comparison to five hours by ambulance. The projected cost for the new air service is $5.9 million annually.
The province said the LifeFlight aircraft will carry two to four patients per trip and make three round trips daily.
“That means up to 12 ambulances a day will be staying in communities,” the release said.
Over time, the airplane’s daily round trips are expected to increase beyond the current expectation of three per day, according to the release.
The new airplane comes in addition to EHS LifeFlight’s critical care aircrafts, which consist of one plane and two helicopters, which complete about 1,200 trips per year.