New helicopters welcome news to Digby hospital

The launch of two new EHS Lifeflight helicopters on Dec. 15 had special significance for Digby General Hospital, since it meant that the service could resume landings on the hospital helipad, saving critical time in patient transport.

EHS Lifeflight provides critical care transport services in Nova Scotia with fixed wing, helicopter and critical care ground transport, both hospitalto-hospital and incident scene responses.

Digby Hospital Site Manager Hubert d’entremont said they were very relieved by the news.

“Obviously, we feel very, very pleased by the news of the approval of the two helicopters,” d’entremont said. “This situation has caused a very significant impact on the time involved in the transport of patients.”

On April 1, 2016, Transport Canada, citing new certification levels, prohibited the older LifeFlight helicopter from landing at Digby General Hospital, QEII Health Sciences Centre and IWK Health Centre.

While that helicopter had passed its regular transport Canada safety inspection, it did not have the current certification level now required by Transport Canada regulations to land at certain helipads.

When that order was issued there was no allowance of time for the helicopter to be brought into compliance.

Since then, the EHS Lifeflight helicopter has had to land at the Digby- Annapolis Regional Airport, and patients have been transported from the aircraft to hospital by ambulance and vice versa, adding time to the transport of critical care cases.

EHS Operations Corporate Communications Officer Jean Moore said the addition of the two new aircraft means that EHS Lifeflight can now resume landings directly at Digby General Hospital helipad for helicopterbased missions.

“This will equate to a time savings of approximately 10 minutes,” Moore stated.

“The Digby airport will still be utilized for fixed wing missions.”

D’entremont said the saving of 10 minutes as quoted by EHS was very “generous.”

“We know it was more like 10 minutes each way,” he said, outlining the critical time that was involved in the unloading and loading of both staff and patients at each end of the trip to the hospital from the airport and vice versa.

While the Lifeflight service has not yet been needed in Digby since the announcement in December at the time this story had been written, d’entremont repeated he is very relieved.

“This is very significant news,” he said.