Medivacs for shopping

[FurHat]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nat ... le4561886/

Whoops.

[FL280]

Corruption in the North? I'm shocked!!

[Mr. North]

A real shame actually. Terry provided a good service and many a pilot had their start at keeper river air. It was one of those rare employers where a newbie could start flying immediately, without spending a year on the ground or signing a training bond.

Their radio calls "going from pop to pik" or "pik to pop" were frequent and one of the more familiar sounds of the area.

[Cat Driver]

Abuse of emergency medical evacuations is well ingrained in the Canadian culture.

When the Government turns a blind eye to this problem it can only get more ingrained in the culture.

It was well intrenched in the culture when I first started flying these medivacs forty five years ago.

I guess the best way to deal with this is to consider it a perk for everyone except the tax payers.

And occasionally it is a perk for the funeral providers.

[Expat]

Nurses? That is only the tip of the iceberg! Patients is even worse. Red lake is small fry. Thompson, Timmins, Rouyn-Noranda and Val D'Or are the few places I have seen Christmas shopping on free flights. Boom times for the towns!
You fly them in pretending to be sick, and fly them back completely sick and drunk.
Of course operators are mute. This is their bread.

[iflyforpie]

Schedevacs. Grandma's got an ingrown toenail and we need to go to town to go shopping.

You've got to admit though, having people on the ground in the middle of nowhere with a free air service is probably more cost effective for the tax payers for sovereignty purposes than billions of dollars worth of fighter jets that don't ever shoot anything down.

[grimey]

Nurses? That is only the tip of the iceberg! ...

This, a million times over. Talk to nurses or doctors who deal with the guys who come in. The number of people who miss appointments,but not the flight, or abandon their kid at the hospital for 2 days when they fly in is disturbing.

[co-joe]

I always found it weird that when mummy had a sore tummy and needed a medeevak, the whole family already had their bags packed for a week down south. The women had their hair and nails done for a night out on the town...I mean to visit mummy in da hoshpital... it was weird that when we got to the airport nobody wanted to come to the emerge to wait, they all got a cab elsewhere... another 1.2 in the log book eh.

[MrWings]

These patient shopping trips are well known in the industry and the communities. Those at the top in the big cities don't want to hear about or deal with it.

[Cat Driver]

I had a medivac request one day when we had cancelled the sked due to crappy weather in Great Whale River.

Suspecting that it may not be a true emergency I asked the radio operator to get back to the nursing station and confirm it was a matter of life or death to get the patient out of the village that had requested the medivac.

Anyhow the nurse said yes it was very serious so when the weather picked up enough to go I took off, when we got airborne the FSS station called me and said the vllage wanted to know if we had their freight on board....which of course I did not.

When we landed two freighter canoes full of people showed up and they all climed on the airplane and found seats, I could not figure out which one was the patient so I asked the nurse where the patient was, she pointed out which one it was.

I told the nurse that based on the fact she said it was an emergency there was two ways this would end.

I would take the patient and her husband as long as she came with us as a medical escort.

The other option was everyone was to get off the airplane and I would return to Great Whale empty.

We turfed the tribe off the airplane and the nurse ended up going back with us as an escort....funny thing was the patient recovered before we got to Great Whale and spent the next five days waiting with the nurse for the next sked.

Of course there was hell to pay about my decision but in the end it just faded away.

[Cat Driver]

delete

[Doc]

Wish I GARA

[Siddley Hawker]

This can't be a real problem otherwise the CBC 5th Estate would have done a documentary on it.

[BigQ]

Cost of return medevac: 5000
Cost of medical van trip to airport: 50
Cost of doctor's visit, approx 1 hour: 300-400

Patient and escort show up 2 hours late for return leg, with 6 full grocery bags: Priceless

[Beefitarian]

Must be part of being an English colony. Last time I was in Briton there were posters in the pubs and stores that said, "Ambulances are not taxis. Only phone for one if there is a medical emergancy."

[thirdtimecharm]

In Nunavut I understand that the nurse at the Health Centre cannot order a medevac on their own but they are sent after a doctor gives the go ahead and the Department of Health actually dispatches the flight.

Not sure why this wouldn't be the case everywhere? If you make the Government of Nunavut look like fiscal conservatives then you have real problems

[The Mole]

1000ft over popular hill.

Me: Why is there garbage on the roofs of those houses????

Forestry officer: Bears....

Me: ohhh. How very clever...

[just curious]

What happened to Medcom dispatching aircraft out of Don Mills? Or did the MOH just get completely on drugs when they dreamed up Ornge?