Life Flight
Intermountaion Life Flight, Intermountain Healthcare's air ambulance unit, provides emergency air transportation as well as non-emergency transport for victims particularly in remote areas, as well as emergency scenes where time is critical. In addition to transport, Life Flight also provides search-and-rescue services to the region. It currently consists of five helicopters and three fixed-wing aircraft.
Life Flight originally began service in 1972 with just fixed-winged aircraft, but on 6 July 1978 it performed its first patient transport by helicopter, becoming the seventh helicopter (rotor wing) air medical service in the United States.
Intermountain currently operates two Agusta A109K2 helicopters, one Agusta AW109 SP Grand, and two Bell 407 helicopters. The helicopters are based at McKay-Dee Hospital Center in Odgen, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, and Dixie Regional Medical Center in St. George. Life Flight also operates three Beechcraft B200 King Air twin-turboprop aircraft. Two are based at Life Flight's operations center at the Salt Lake City International Airport, and the third is based at St. George Municipal Airport. The helicopters generally service an area 150 mile around their base, but can travel 1,000 miles without refueling. In addition to servicing Utah, Life Flight transports patients from Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and other locations in the Western United States
Life Flight and its staff are Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS) certified. All of Life Flight's helicopters routinely use night vision goggles (NVG) and its Agusta Grand's can operate in high-altitude situations. Life Flight can can provide a medical control physician 24/7 so it staff does not have to rely solely on standing orders or protocols, as do many other similar air medical services. Life Flight has six teams:
- Adult Team
- Pediatric Team - Life Flight is the only air ambulance service with nurses specially trained to care for infants and children (ages 0–18) that operates in the Intermountain West.
- Neonatal Team - Life Flight performs about 1,200 neonatal transports each year
- Respiratory Team
- LVAD Team - Assisting those patients in need of a ventricular assist device
- Hoist / Search & Rescue Team - Life Flight has performed hoist rescues since 2001; in fact, it is the first and only civilian air ambulance service in the United States that conducts hoist resuces and the only such service in the intermountian region.
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Famous quotes containing the words life and/or flight:
“There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)