Board of Visitors minutes :: May 29, 1987 :: University of Virginia Library

On August 31, 1984, the University of Virginia Hospitals established a medically-equipped professionally-staffed helicopter service known as Pegasus. This highly successful service has assisted physicians in rapid transport of hundreds of patients to destinations throughout the region.

Due to high utilization of this service and increased demand for long-distance transports, the University of Virginia Hospitals proposes the establishment of a critical care, Charlottesville-based Fixed-Wing Air Ambulance to service the State of Virginia and its bordering states (800-mile radius of Charlottesville).

This program will allow the University of Virginia Hospitals to provide a State-wide service which is not currently available. Much of the State, excluding metropolitan areas, is remote from the facilities of a major medical center with Level I trauma center designation. It has been demonstrated through national studies, and our own program, Pegasus, that air ambulances allow faster response times than do ground ambulances to calls more than fifteen minutes travel distance. For shorter distances, the ground ambulances have more favorable response times. The same concept is true regarding fixed-wing transports. The helicopter transport service, Pegasus, is very efficient within a radius of 150 miles of Charlottesville, but becomes more inefficient with regard to costs and response time beyond the 150-mile radius. A fixed-wing aircraft is faster and more efficient between the 150-800 mile range. The proposed air ambulance service will make a rapid response critical care air ambulance available to all citizens of the Commonwealth who require medical care, regardless of their ability to pay.

The proposed fixed-wing transportation service addresses the following regional needs:
1. The need for rapid transportation of seriously-ill patients to an appropriate health care facility.
2. The provision of sophisticated intensive emergency care during the transportation of a critically-ill patient to a hospital.
3. Providing the benefits of a major medical center to those areas without such care, using the fixed-wing transportation service.

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4. Providing the above benefits without regard to a person's ability to pay.

At present, there is no immediate response hospital-based fixed-wing air ambulance service in the State of Virginia. The University of Virginia Hospitals proposes to provide an immediate response medical flight service program which will serve as a primary response vehicle to areas of the Commonwealth which are not feasible for rotor-wing access due to weather and distance considerations. The University of Virginia's helicopter program, Pegasus, has had success during the first three years of operation and has transported over 1,500 patients. However, Pegasus has not responded to requests for helicopter evacuation nearly 600 times due to weather conditions. We have missed approximately 400 flights because of flights-in-progress, about 90 flights due to maintenance requirements. The availability of a dedicated fixed-wing aircraft will significantly reduce the missed calls due to weather and virtually eliminate missed calls due to flights-in-progress and maintenance. In addition, the fixed-wing aircraft will serve as an alternative to Pegasus and the Newborn Emergency Transport Service (NETS) for long-distance flights (150 nautical miles), therefore establishing a two-component system which all transports from 0-150 mile radius of Charlottesville would be handled by the rotor-wing aircraft and transports from 150-500 mile radius of Charlottesville will be assigned to the fixed-wing service. This two-component system would be highly cost effective and provide total access to a medical facility to anyone in the Commonwealth. The air ambulance will be based at the Charlottesville/Albemarle Airport and staffed by a specialty transport team consisting of critical care nurses, nationally registered paramedics, and IFR-certified pilots.

The aircraft and crew would be capable of responding within 30 minutes from the request for service for any of the following needs: on-scene transport (local squad transporting the patient to the local airport), transport of drugs and supplies to disaster or major incident areas, organ transport, and interhospital treatment of patients.

The fixed-wing aircraft will be capable of landing in any one of over 50 airports within the Commonwealth, virtually providing multiple service capabilities to anyone in the Commonwealth within one hour.