LAKELAND – There is no doubt that STARS Air Ambulance services play a vital role in providing life-saving care for Lakeland and rural area residents in emergencies where critical and expedient medical treatment is desperately needed.
As a charity helicopter air ambulance service, STARS has become the best hope for patients in many worst-case scenarios.
STARS has carried out a combined 655 missions to emergency calls within the MD of Bonnyville, Lac La Biche County, the County of St. Paul, Smoky Lake County and the County of Vermilion River from May 31, 2018, to May 31, 2023. This is according to information provided by Glenda Farnden, the senior municipal relations liaison with STARS Air Ambulance.
The charity’s community focus of providing ‘Critical Care, Anywhere,’ is just one of the reasons that the Bonnyville and District Chamber of Commerce selected STARS Ambulance to be the recipient of door proceeds from the Bonnyville and District Oil & Gas Show (BOAGS) held in June.
Last week, the Chamber’s project coordinator Megan Wakefield presented a cheque totalling $3,400 to STARS Ambulance representative Ken Pshyk.
Even more money was raised for STARS at BOAGS through a 50/50 raffle, community donations and merchandise sales. A grand total of $4,750 was raised for the charitable organization over the course of the two-day event.
Critical care in the Lakeland
Farnden outlined just how instrumental STARS Ambulance has been for a number of Lakeland residents who relied on its services while presenting to MD of Bonnyville council on June 27.
Data collected by STARS shows that in the last five years there have been 221 missions and critical inter-facility transfers within the MD’s boundaries alone.
“These missions, usually critical inter-facility transfers, occur where local ground ambulance has delivered the patient to the local hospital but because it is of a critical nature, STARS is called to come and get these patients,” Farnden explained.
Over the five-year span, there have been 110 critical transfers from the Bonnyville hospital, 89 transfers from the Cold Lake hospital, nine missions located near the Town of Bonnyville, six missions near the City of Cold Lake, four missions from the Glendon area, two from Kehewin Cree Nation, and one mission from the Rich Lake area.
"This equates to an average of 41 missions per year,” said Farnden. A unique outlier not caught in the most current data update shows that on June 7, a STARS air ambulance was dispatched on two separate missions to the MD of Bonnyville area.
Maintaining municipal support
The cost of operating a fleet of helicopter ambulances outfitted with critical care equipment is not cheap. According to Farnden, the annual cost to keep a single STARS base running is $10 million. Alberta has three bases – Edmonton, Calgary and Grande Prairie.
And while the charitable organization received a dose of good news from Alberta Health Services (AHS) late last year, an annual 50 per cent operational funding commitment from the province won’t include the cost of running its dispatch centre, the Emergency Links Centre, or any educational costs for its staff.
STARS relies on the generosity of donors, lotteries and municipal governments to generate the remaining funding required to stay in the skies.
Currently, STARS generates just over $2 million per year in sustainable operational support through renewed pledges from Alberta municipalities.
The MD of Bonnyville is on a fixed rate pledge of $12,000 per year until 2025, corresponding with council’s term.
The County of St. Paul provides STARS a contribution of $2 per capita, totalling $12,936 per year, which has been approved for the next three years.
“We certainly appreciate that because these are the areas that we know we can count on each year as the mission rate continues to increase,” Farnden noted.
“We've just added five more rural municipalities as well as five more urban municipalities. So, we welcome them to join us in a united effort as we work together to ensure that we all have access to a robust health and safety network.”
The municipal councils of MD of Lesser Slave River, Lac La Biche County and Two Hills currently have pending pledge requests before them.
“We are very hopeful that we are starting to unite the entire province [and] that we're all working together,” she added.
RELATED STORY: County of St. Paul renews commitment to STARS Ambulance
Ambulances on the ground and in the air
When it comes to the dispatching of paramedics in emergency situations, whether by ground or air, numerous factors are considered in situations where quick decisions need to be made.
Patient acuity, the severity of a patient’s condition, is first and foremost when it comes to emergency medical response, noted Dan Heney, the Regional Fire Chief for the Bonnyville Regional Fire Authority (BRFA).
“What's important to know is that whether ambulances goes by ground, or if its fixed wing air, or if its rotary wing air, all of that is managed through deployment management under AHS,” explained Heney.
Like the BRFA, STARS is also a services provider to the provincial health agency and is one part of a multi-layered medical response system in Alberta. The services STARS is contracted to provide are specific to the capability and availability of its fleet.
“Having STARS available, is a huge benefit,” said Heney, noting that STARS isn't launched immediately just because an incident is considered severe.
“STARS gets launched when a crew or a doctor contacts deployment management and provides additional information on the condition of the patient,” he said. “The benefit is they take a lot of things into consideration and can select which type of response is best suited to the situation at hand.”
One of the major considerations is flight time, total transport time, where the nearest available ground ambulance is positioned, and what level of care that ambulance is capable of providing.
“If there was only Primary Care Paramedics available, then STARS might launch more often, but because [the BRFA] has Advanced Care Paramedics that have a different scope, that might mean that STARS wouldn't launch because the Advanced Care Paramedics can do whatever the flight team was going to do,” Heney explained.
Another factor is whether a ground ambulance could make an injury worse. Heney described a situation where a serious head and spinal injury may require air transport based on the needs of the patient.
“But all of those decisions are made by trained AHS professionals,” he reiterated. “There's a whole bunch of moving parts and pieces in that formula as to how they decide when and where they're going to launch STARS.”
