Lifesaver at Work
This is Rich Rugg. Someday he might just save your life. He is a helicopter pilot for Banner Health’s Med Evac unit, and last Saturday he was stationed at Akron, CO. He’s former military: recently retired from the Army National Guard. His son is currently a drill instructor for the Marines. He’s proud of that.
Rich was kind enough to give us an impromptu interview about his job when we saw him walking the grounds at the Northern Colorado Medical Center’s Med Evac airport and heliport. We got the full tour, as he showed us the interior of his gleaming machine and explained what life is like in his job.
Rugg actually lives on the Front Range, but when he’s at work, he lives in housing provided by the company right at the airport. There are always two pilots on site. Each pilot works a 12-hour shift. Much of the off-shift is spent sleeping, but kitchen facilities, exercise equipment, etc. is also provided to be sure that the pilots are able to stay in excellent shape.
Banner Health has three Med Evac ports in Colorado: the one in Akron, one in Greeley, and one in Boulder. He says most of the patient transfers he does are between one hospital, such as Northern Colorado Medical Center, and a city hospital such as Denver Health that has higher-level Trauma and ICU facilities.
Rugg stated that on an average day he would make between 1 and 3 patient transfers. On a busy day there could be 5 or 6. It takes about an hour for the helicopter to fly from Northern Colorado Medical Center in Akron to Denver Health. Most transfers are made hospital to hospital, but according to Rugg it is not unknown for a helicopter to have to pick up an emergency patient and paramedic from a field, pasture, or highway.
One of the most interesting aspects of Rugg’s job is this. In bad weather — which can mean either heavy winds and precipitation or high heat, because rotating wing aircraft do not perform well in hot weather — the pilot must make the call as to whether it is safe to fly. Typically, the pilot is not informed as to the criticality of the patient’s condition, because knowing might affect the pilot’s judgement and there are other lives at risk than just the patient.
Rugg’s life and work provide a dramatic illustration of why medical care in rural areas is so costly. The likelihood that a rural patient must be moved to a larger hospital is much higher than if the same patient were in a city, because the city patient is more likely to be taken to a hospital with appropriate capability in the first place. But tiny rural hospitals often only have the basic ability to stabilize a patient prior to med evac.
Rugg has a recommendation for every rural family, especially to families engaged in dangerous farm or ranch work. An insurance policy is available to rural families for $55/family/year. It’s called an Ambulance Air Care policy. The company covering our area is AirMedCare Network. We did a quick on-line check and found no issues with the company. [This is not an endorsement by WTF Colorado.]
Thank you for taking the time to let us talk with you and admire your aircraft, Mr. Rugg. And most of all, thank you for your service.
Originally published in The Weathervane No 9 on July 20, 2017. [Subscribe]
