Mayo Clinic's hospital-based emergency air medical transport service

Mayo Clinic's hospital-based helicopter transport service, which is staffed by a medical flight crew consisting of two critical-care nurses, was initiated in October 1984. To date, more than 2,500 patients with a wide range of life-threatening conditions have been transported. As a quality-assurance tool, a computerized data collection system was initiated in 1986, and this report details a 3-year experience in air transport garnered prospectively. From 1986 through 1988, 1,701 flights were completed in response to 2,329 requests for transport. Overall, 10% of requests were declined because of weather. Of 1,727 patients transported, 94% were brought to the Mayo Medical Center for care. The categories of the patients were medical-surgical in 1,071 (62%), trauma in 553 (32%), and neonates in 103 (6%). Most transports (93%) originated from referral inpatient facilities or emergency rooms; the rest were scene flights or transports from Mayo to other facilities. The mortality rate among the 1,632 patients brought to the Mayo Medical Center was 16.3%. The mean distance transported was 77 miles for interhospital and 23 miles for scene flights. For both trauma and medical-surgical patients, the severity of illness was evaluated with use of recognized quantitative scoring systems. Prospective collection of data has proved useful in program administration, quality assurance, and clinical research. Mayo Clinic's hospital-based helicopter transport program has served as a logical extension of the institution's emergency-care capabilities in an effort to enhance the prehospital and interhospital care of the critically ill within the institution's referral area.