News
Archived News Item
April 27, 2006 - Plan to put air ambulances on reservations nationwide
SIOUX FALL S- Isolated American Indians soon will be closer to emergency health care through a plan to put air ambulances on reservations nationwide.
The first airplanes will be on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota by July, then Fort Berthold in North Dakota.
The goal is to reduce the time it takes to get a patient to a hospital that can provide a level of care not available in rural areas.
"If we can start saving hours ... we can start saving lives," Tex Hall, chairman of the Inter-Tribal Economic Alliance, said Wednesday at the announcement in Sioux Falls.
It now can take three or four hours for some patients to get to a hospital because the air ambulance first must fly from its hospital to the reservation and then back to the hospital.
Hall's coalition of tribes is working with PassNet of Plymouth, Minn., which secured investors and plans to put fixed-wing airplanes on 50 reservations over the next five years and cut that time, its CEO, John Warnock, said.
"We want to roll this out one station a month," he said.
Funding for the flights will come from the federal programs under which the patients are covered: Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Services and the Veterans Administration, Warnock said.
Cecelia Fire Thunder, Oglala Sioux Tribe president, said the service will allow patients to be taken immediately to a burn unit, for example, instead of local and regional hospitals first.
The airplanes also will be used to fly in specialists so people can be cared for on the reservation, which will keep that money from going elsewhere, said Fire Thunder, whose tribal members live on the huge Pine Ridge reservation in southwestern South Dakota.
"We're going to be able to bring the experts in," she said.
Rep. Paul Valandra, D-Mission, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, mentioned the need to Warnock in December. The Rosebud and Pine Ridge health committees and tribal councils have since approved it, and the planes are scheduled to be in service by summer.
"This group moves at warp speed," Warnock said.
Valandra said the state also will save Medicaid money because of the ability to shop around for the best rates and specialties.
Warnock said fixed-wing airplanes will be used instead of helicopters because they cost a third less to operate, are faster and can fly in inclement weather.
He said that in 2003, he dislodged a piece of food from his 4-year-old son's throat, and the seven minutes it took paramedics to arrive seemed like an eternity.
"I can't imagine what it's like to hold a child's hand for four hours," Warnock said.
Hall, chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes in Fort Berthold, N.D., is also former president of the National Congress of American Indians. The Inter-Tribal Economic Alliance, which he now runs, is a national coalition of Indian tribes, Alaska natives and native Hawaiians.
By Carson Walker, Associated Press Writer