Health minister Jerome Kennedy today refused to answer questions from reporters following his claim that incidents in St. Anthony related to his decision to relocate the air ambulance service had reached the pointed where he was speeding up the relocation.
As CBC reported:
"There has been at least one other incident that has caused us some concern," said Kennedy, who added that the situation in St. Anthony has become so volatile that the government moved up its timetable on relocating the air ambulance service.
But Kennedy would not describe other incidents, and was not available to speak with reporters later.
Kennedy is moving the air ambulance without a trained crew to handle medical evacuations. As a result, the aircraft will have to fly from its new home in Goose Bay to St. John’s to pick up a crew and then return to carry out the med evac.
The relocation came after two incidents in Labrador where aircraft were unavailable for medevac flights. Neither incident was connected to the aircraft base location.
In the fall of 2009, for example, a child waited for nine hours while the lone air ambulance then flying made a series of runs to and from Labrador with more urgent patients. The second of the provincial government’s two medevac aircraft was down for repairs at the time and – apparently – no arrangements had been made for a backup.
Other aircraft were potentially available. For example, Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation – owned 65% by the provincial government’s energy corporation - owns a B-300 King Air that is both available for charter under certain circumstances and which can be configured for medical evacuation.
In late 2006, entrepreneur Bill Barry tried to interest the provincial government in chartering aircraft from a company he owned at the time to provide medevac service from Deer Lake. It appears nothing came of the idea.
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4 comments:
Yowhatu said neither incident was connected to the aircraft base location. However please see comments of LG Health CEO Boyd Rowe on CBC today :
'Rowe said, in a statement, that the first incident occurred on April 26, the same day that a delegation from St. Anthony held a boisterous rally in St. John's.
The statement said, "The aircraft and the pilot remained in St. John's while a protest rally was occurring at Confederation Building."
The second, Rowe said, occurred last Friday, "where a pilot refused to fly a routine flight because the individual felt he was unable to do so. The pilot did not inform us prior to the medevac request that he was unable to fly."
After a second pilot was contacted, Rowe said, he also indicated he could not fly.
Rowe said the "air ambulance was unable to be put into service" that day."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/05/12/air-ambulance-board-512.html#ixzz0nk4sOooH
Jerome ducked the media after making an unclear comment in the legislature.
Those two incidents still don't explain why the relocation will be speeded up.
The statement from LG is vague and I am thinking it is unnecessarily vague under the circumstances.
In a union environment,LG Health said as much as it could but come on ... do you really think the business with the two pilots was coincidence
Do you really think the relocation was a coincidence with the Tory loss in the Straits?
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