Vantaa’s Medi-Heli moves into spacious new premises

Operation of helicopter emergency medical services to be handed over to hospital districts

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By Matti Huhta
     
      The staff of the helicopter emergency medical service Medi-Heli are all smiles: the rapid-response chopper and its crew have taken delivery of new and many times more spacious premises at the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport.
      “This is a major step forward. Medi-Heli has operated out of Vantaa for 17 years, and only now do we have the first premises specifically designed for this activity”, enthuses senior physician Janne Virta.
      Until now the emergency helicopter crew has been stationed in an old sheet-metal hangar beside the cargo planes at the northeastern corner of the airport.
      The new building is right next to the old one, for from the operational point of view the location has been identified as good.
     
The central space of the new building is the large helicopter hall, from which the chopper, which rests on a cradle, can be pulled out quickly.
      In the garage next door a new doctor-on-board ambulance waits to be used in the nearby areas, or when the weather prevents the helicopter from taking off.
      But most of all the new building benefits the crew. “Now, for the first time, we have decent and comfortable staff rooms”, Janne Virta notes with some satisfaction. The building’s command centre is the doctors' workroom, which is filled with the latest technology.
      “We can access, for example, patient data from the entire hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa”, explains Virta.
      From the computer terminals the doctor-on-duty can quickly check cardiograms sent by the ambulance crew or a patient’s X-ray images.
     
According to Virta, a large portion of the emergency helicopter doctor’s workload consists of consultation help given from the base to the staff on the move.
      The Medi-Heli doctors are dispatched between 2,200 and 2,400 times a year, whereas the number of times when consultation help is given is significantly larger, around 6,000 cases per year.
      The round-the-clock service by Medi-Heli is taken care of by two department doctors, one specialising doctor, and around a dozen physicians working on a part-time basis. Furthermore, the regular staff includes seven flight assistants with nursing training, and five pilots.
     
The helicopter doctors are employed by the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa. The flight assistants have been hired by the Medi-Heli organisation itself.
      The organisation purchases the helicopter services with the pilots from the Åland Islands-based Skärgårdshavets Helikoptertjänst (SHT) company.
      The Medi-Heli organisation and the Ensihoidon tukisäätiö support trust jointly own the new service building, which came with a EUR 2.7 million price-tag.
     
Around 30 per cent of the helicopter emergency medical services operations are still funded by fundraising campaigns.
      Medi-Heli’s most important single source of financing is Finland’s Slot Machine Association (RAY).
      “We certainly hope that we will soon become obsolete and that the society will once and for all start running the entire operation”, says executive manager Risto Manninen of the Medi-Heli organisation.
     
Plans are in place for the handing over of the helicopter emergency medical services to an administrative unit formed by the country’s hospital districts by the year 2011.
      There are six helicopter emergency medical services units in Finland, of which the Vantaa, Turku, and Vaasa choppers are run by Medi-Heli.
      The remaining helicopters operate from Oulu, Varkaus, and Sodankylä, up in Lapland.
      Of these, Sodankylä’s Aslak helicopter operates normally without a doctor.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 17.9.2009


Links:
  Medi-Heli (Website in Finnish or Swedish only)
  SHT

MATTI HUHTA / Helsingin Sanomat
matti.huhta@hs.fi