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updated 01-19-97
By Steve Duffy, EMT-P
No Life Flight? Now what? The two companies that currently serve San Diego County are Air Life and Mercy Air. Some of the changes you will see are that both companies have invested substantially and both brought in new equipment. Mercy Air has been flying around just north of us for quite some time, occasionally coming into San Diego from Riverside. Now they will have a station at Palomar Airport and will soon have a second helicopter in Ramona. They will be utilizing their existing dispatch center which is located in Fontana. As far as staffing, they have utilized a lot of experienced people from Riverside as well as hiring some qualified people in town. They also incorporated the UCSD residency program into their system so staffing will be one RN working with either a resident or a paramedic. This unit will be staffed 24 hours a day. They have another helicopter located at Inland Valley Hospital, just north of San Diego County off interstate 15.
Air Life will also be staffing two choppers in the county. The first being a 24 hour unit out of Palomar Airport, and the other being a 12 hour out of Ramona, which will operate from 10 am to 10 pm. Air Life is actually a division of Critical Air, a company that's been in San Diego for awhile doing interfacillity transportation. Critical Air hired a lot of the Life Flight staff and crew to help them set up and run their program. They also hand picked some people to complement their crew. You will always get a paramedic accompanied by an RN on their units. Who will you get when you call? The dispatch system isn't quite ironed out but recently they have decided to go with a single point dispatch system. This was to rectify any problems with competition over individual calls. Right now, depending on the areas in which you call from there are areas in which one company will be faster than the other. If ETA's are the same, some type of call rotation will be assigned.
Stand By... More to follow!!!
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