Mercy Air 34, an emergency air ambulance based at the Paso Robles Airport, will be shutting down this November.
“The future is unknown,” said San Luis Obispo County EMS Division Director Ryan Rosander following the recent announcement. “One-thousand lives have either been touched, saved, or otherwise given the best opportunity to be saved when within the county due to Mercy.”
He says Mercy Air 34 has been operating in the county for the past five years and is the only air ambulance in this area that offers blood. The next closest is Bakersfield.
“They also can bypass local hospitals and transport directly to specialty centers that we don't have here out on the Central Coast,” added CAL FIRE EMS Battalion Chief Rob Jenkins. “So they can go direct to children's hospitals, direct to level one trauma centers, and direct to burn centers, which are probably about a three-hour drive by ground ambulance.”
Although Rosander says Mercy Air’s call volume has been increasing, it isn’t enough to sustain operations.
“Financial pressures from the stagnant rates that Medi-Cal at the state level and the stagnant reimbursement rates at the federal level with Medicare and also the increasing cuts to both of those rates now then puts them in a financial bind to continue operations within our county,” Rosander said.
Jenkins says that frequently clear skies and easy access to rural areas from the Paso Robles Airport, made Mercy Air 34’s work extra important in the northern part of the county.
“Lake Nacimiento, Heritage Ranch, Oaks Shores, Shandon. They've participated a lot in the frequent vehicle accidents we get out on Highway 46 and 41 in the Cholame area,” he said.
With this resource soon out of the picture, Rosander says there’s currently no backup plan and that the county will most likely have to rely on the air ambulance based in Santa Maria going forward.
“They are an incredibly, incredibly talented helicopter crew as well,” he said. “They can do everything that Mercy Air can do, minus that one blood part. But I don't want to sit around here and say that they don't have blood or they won't ever have blood.”
But the concern that Rosander and Jenkins feel without the life-saving resource is top of mind.
“These patients need a doctor. They need a specialist to reverse what it is that they are suffering. And when time is tissue, every single minute that the patient spends outside the hospital is tissue dying, that is where the rapid transport comes in place,” Rosander said.
Mercy Air 34’s last day of service is November 4.
