June 7 2024
Patients requiring emergency travel for medical care will benefit from a new state-of-the-art fleet of air ambulance airplanes.
“When someone you love is critically ill or injured, they deserve the best and fastest care possible,” said Premier David Eby. “Throughout this vast province, we are building new hospitals, cancer-care clinics and urgent primary care centres. By deploying new air ambulances, we are ensuring patients get the quality care they need quickly.”
BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) is replacing its existing fleet with 12 new Beechcraft King Air 360CHW air ambulances. Nine of the airplanes will be in regular operation and three will be backups. The first of these new airplanes went into service on May 1, 2024. This is possible due to a provincial investment of $673 million over 10 years.
“B.C.’s air ambulances make sure that patients, often with the most critical-care needs, can quickly access the health care they need,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health. “Upgrading B.C.’s fleet with next-generation airplanes means patients will have improved comfort and care during transport, while paramedics benefit from consistent features and layout across the fleet.”
Air ambulances allow patients to be treated by highly trained paramedics while they are being transported. These airplanes are the fastest way to travel to a health-care facility, especially for patients in hard-to-reach areas. These aircraft are used both in emergency medical response and to transfer patients between health-care facilities.
The new aircrafts have several features that will benefit patients across the province, including:
- the ability to land on gravel runways;
- expanded capabilities for specialized care;
- improved patient and paramedic safety through power stretcher compatibility; and
- uniform layout and design that will improve patient outcomes and expanded flight crews.
Air ambulances will remain stationed in their current locations with three airplanes each in Vancouver and Kelowna, two in Prince George and one in Fort St. John.
These new air ambulances build on historical progress to improve ambulance services for patients by adding more paramedics, adding more vehicles and updating fleets of vehicles used by paramedics.
In 2023-24, paramedics, dispatchers and call takers responded to 596,014 emergency medical events and completed 71,198 interfacility patient transfers throughout the province, including 8,290 patient transports involving air resources, 6,177 of which were by airplane. Approximately 70% of calls for air ambulances use airplanes and 30% use helicopters.
Since 2017, spending on emergency health services has increased by more than $475 million, reaching close to $1 billion in 2023-24. These investments have helped to increase BCEHS staffing, training and mental-health support, as well as access to ambulance services across B.C., especially in rural and remote communities.
Learn More:
To learn more about Carson Air, visit: https://www.carsonair.com/
For information about BC Emergency Health Services adding more ambulances and paramedic response units, visit: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HLTH0066-000754
For information about B.C. government’s work to expand the health workforce, including paramedics, visit: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2023HLTH0150-001930
Two backgrounders follow.
Backgrounders
BCEHS updates air ambulance fleet with 12 new airplanes
Founded in 1990, Carson Air is the primary provider of fixed-wing airplane services in B.C. The company also provides air cargo services and operates a flight school. These services are collectively provided from its five bases of operations in Kelowna, Vancouver, Calgary, Prince George and Fort St John.
BCEHS has been working with key partners on an aviation fleet renewal program to upgrade and replace the existing air ambulances. Carson Air became the sole provider of air ambulance airplane service in B.C. as of May 1, 2024.
Carson Air was selected after a procurement process, which involved an in-depth evaluation with BCEHS staff, industry and subject matter experts, external legal fairness advisers and Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) procurement staff.
Features of the new Beechcraft King Air 360CHW air ambulance airplanes compared to the previous fleet include:
- The ability to land on gravel runways – air ambulance airplanes can land and take off in more communities, increasing health-care access for Indigenous, northern, and rural and remote communities.
- Significantly expanded capabilities for specialized care – all 12 airplanes in the BCEHS fleet will be able to carry patients with highly-specialized medical needs, including patients requiring life support. They will be able to support:
- patients using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a form of life support that that does the work of the heart and lungs for patients who are critically ill (currently only 50% of B.C.’s air ambulance airplanes can support ECMO).
- neonatal patients in biomedical neonatal transport incubators, the gold standard, which are an improvement over the smaller incubators the infant transport team currently use on the air ambulance airplanes.
- bariatric patients (only one of the current airplanes can support these patients and in a day-time flight only configuration).
- patients in EpiShuttles, a mobile medical isolation unit used for patients with certain infectious diseases (only one of the current airplanes can support these patients and in a day-time flight only configuration).
- Improved patient and paramedic safety through power stretcher compatibility – Paramedics will be able to load the power stretchers from ground ambulances directly onto the air ambulance airplane, eliminating the need to transfer patients from stretcher to stretcher.
- Streamlined uniform layout and design, improving outcomes and expanding flight crews – All the airplanes will have the same layout, with vital supplies stored in the same place in every aircraft. This will make it easier to train paramedics to work on the airplanes and expand the number of paramedics at all levels who can serve aboard the aircraft alongside highly trained critical-care paramedics and infant transport team paramedics.
- State-of-the-art aircraft with modern avionics technology – Other features of the new airplanes include:
- more powerful engines with heavy-lift capacity and improved pressurization;
- large (132 by 124 centimetres) electrically controlled cabin door improves patient loading, while the spacious cabin ensures full access to the patient, including four cabin seats;
- latest generation avionics glass cockpit with enhanced vision systems providing exceptional situational awareness; and
- connected cabin allows for future Wi-Fi capabilities to allow paramedics to view status of oxygen flow and capacity, power and controllable lighting via LCD displays.
Air ambulance airplanes come specially equipped in the same level as an intensive-care ward and can be adjusted to accommodate the patient’s needs. BCEHS air ambulances are typically staffed by critical-care paramedics, who have advanced training to provide the highest level of specialized care with a focus on acute interfacility transport, air medical response, and infant, child and perinatal care.
In certain circumstances, doctors and other medical personnel may also accompany patients on air ambulances. Air ambulance airplanes are the first choice in cases that require urgent transfer of patients or when the travel distance is long.
BCEHS is the largest paramedic and ambulance service in the country and is supported by the PHSA. It provides provincial emergency-call taking, dispatch and paramedic health-care services under the Emergency Health Services Act to all people in British Columbia.
It is also responsible for the planning and co-ordination of interfacility patient transfers that require paramedic care, as well as the community paramedicine program, which provides scheduled care to patients living with chronic health conditions in remote and rural communities across British Columbia.
What people are saying about the new air ambulances
Jennifer Rice, Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health –
“These new air ambulances mean that more people in B.C.’s rural and remote communities will have access to specialized critical care, while being transported to health-care facilities best equipped to meet their care needs. We continue to strengthen paramedic services in the harder to reach communities across the province because everyone deserves high-level critical care regardless of where they live.”
Leanne Heppell, chief ambulance officer and executive vice-president, BCEHS –
“We are grateful to be working with Carson Air on modernizing our fixed-wing air ambulance fleets. The ability to move a patient from a ground ambulance to an air ambulance without having to change stretchers is not only better for patients’ quality of care and timely service, but it will also lower the risk potential for injuries to our paramedics.”
Kevin Hillier, president, Carson Air –
“We are looking forward to continuing to service the Province of B.C. air ambulance program under the new long-term contract with state-of-the-art aircraft that have been modified with world-class medical interiors, and to expand and increase health-care access safely and efficiently across the entire province.”
Christopher Singh, critical-care paramedic –
“This airplane allows us to land in more remote communities and reduces the time a patient spends in transit. We’ll have the capability to load a patient directly onto the airplane without putting them through an uncomfortable stretcher transfer. As flight paramedics in British Columbia, we now have more capacity to care for very ill patients with specialized medical needs.”
