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North Country legislators meet with Ft. Drum officials to try to get air ambulance service restored

Posted 6/21/11

Northern New York legislators met yesterday at Fort Drum with military officials in an effort to re-establish effective air ambulance service for the region. The meeting included Assemblyman Ken …

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North Country legislators meet with Ft. Drum officials to try to get air ambulance service restored

Posted

Northern New York legislators met yesterday at Fort Drum with military officials in an effort to re-establish effective air ambulance service for the region.

The meeting included Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush, Assemblywoman Addie Russell, Sen. Patty Ritchie, Fort Drum officials, Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy, and members of the New York State Police to make the case for reinstating a medical evacuation helicopter unit at Fort Drum.

The meeting was arranged by the governor’s office at the request of Assemblyman Blankenbush.

Since the North Country lost the services of a military air ambulance based at Ft. Drum four years ago, the number of cases that would use such a service has increased.

Meanwhile the state Senate yesterday approved a bill sponsored by Sen. Ritchie that would make it easier to recruit a commercial service to the North Country.

“Many of New York's most rural areas can be hours away from trauma centers,” Ritchie said. “Four years ago, northern New York lost the services of the Military Assistance to Safety and Traffic unit at Fort Drum in Jefferson County. Now air ambulances come from Saranac Lake or Syracuse which severely lengthens response times and are weather dependent especially in the winter months. Like other areas of the state, the people and visitors of northern New York would greatly benefit from the presence of a professional air ambulance team.”

Ritchie said that low call volume and the expense of running a full-time air ambulance service has made it difficult to attract an air service to New York's rural regions. Allowing air ambulance companies to solicit membership subscriptions would mediate the high cost of doing business in New York, according to Ritchie.

Ritchie’s bill was sent to the Assembly.

Statistics cited at the Ft. Drum meeting show that 25 percent of air medical calls within the 14 county region that includes the North Country came from Jefferson County. The four-county region north of Syracuse accounts for 55 percent of those calls.

The statistics also show that patients 18-54 years of age have a 39 percent greater risk of death if they are transported to trauma centers by ground instead of air, according to a recent CDC study. Assemblywoman Russell also pointed to the difficulty in timely transport of North Country patients such as those on islands or other remote locations.

MAST provided air medical support to emergency incidents across Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties averaging a minimum of 60 transports of critically injured persons annually. Since that time, calls for air medical service have continued to increase with over 120 transports made by air medical in 2010 that had to be called in from outside the region.

“The governor’s staff and Lt. Governor Duffy have offered to assist the North Country and the needs of Ft. Drum,” Russell said, including air medical service.

“I could not be more pleased with their response and the sincerity in which they expressed the willingness to look at ways to support the region,” Russell added.