Medical Emergency Workload of a Regional UK HEMS Service.
OBJECTIVE
Regionalized trauma networks have been established in England to centralize specialist care at dedicated centers of excellence throughout the country. Helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) in the West Midlands region have been redesigned to form an integrated component of such systems. The continued use of such valuable and scarce resources for medical emergencies requires evaluation.


METHODS
A retrospective review of mission data for a regional Air Ambulance Service in England over a two year period.


RESULTS
Medical emergencies continue to contribute a large proportion of the overall workload of the service. Requirement for advanced interventions at the scene was rare, with less than 10% of patients attended by HEMS teams having care needs that fall beyond the scope of standard paramedic practice.


CONCLUSIONS
Dynamic solutions are needed to ensure that HEMS support for cases of medical emergency are appropriately targeted to incidents in which clinical benefit is conferred to the patient. Intelligent tasking of appropriate resources has the potential to improve the HEMS response to medical emergencies while optimizing the availability of resources to respond to other incidents, most notably cases of major trauma.
University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom; Midlands Air Ambulance, West Midlands, United Kingdom. Electronic address: carl_mcqueen@hotmail.com.
Carl
C
McQueen
Midlands Air Ambulance, West Midlands, United Kingdom.
Nick
N
Crombie
Midlands Air Ambulance, West Midlands, United Kingdom.
Stef
S
Cormack
West Midlands Ambulance Service National Health Service Foundation Trust, West Midlands, United Kingdom.
Steve
S
Wheaton
D017732:Air Ambulances; D002637:Chest Pain; D004630:Emergencies; D004632:Emergency Medical Services; D004739:England; D006295:Health Resources; D006801:Humans; D058687:Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest; D010360:Patient Transfer; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D020521:Stroke; D006113:United Kingdom; D016526:Workload; D014947:Wounds and Injuries