| Launch Criteria and Flight Team Capabilities
Traumatic Injury Launch Criteria
HealthNet Aeromedical Flight Teams can manage the following types of patients:
Victims of traumatic injury judged to be at statistically highest risk
of lethal blood loss based on one or more of the following mechanisms
of injury and located more than twenty-five minutes from the nearest
appropriate facility.
- Falls of greater than 20 feet.
- Motor vehicle accident with combined impact speed exceeding 30 mph.
- Motor vehicle accident involving a fatality.
- Roll-over motor vehicle accidents.
- Motor vehicle accidents with a greater than one foot space intrusion into the passenger compartment.
- Motor vehicle accidents involving the ejection of the patient.
- Motorcycle accident with injury.
- Evidence of high energy dissipation.
Victims
of traumatic injury, including burns and drowning with two or more of
the following physiologic findings and located more than twenty minutes
from the nearest appropriate facility:
- Blood pressure below 90 systolic.
- Heart rate greater than 110 in an adult.
- Capillary refill exceeding two seconds.
- Altered level of consciousness.
- Chest or abdominal tenderness.
- Respiratory distress.
- Evidence of paralysis of extremities.
Victims of traumatic injury with one or more of the following anatomic findings:
- Penetrating injury to the head, neck or torso.
- Severe blunt trauma to the head, neck or torso.
- Amputation proximal to the wrist or ankle.
- Uncorrected airway obstruction.
- Evidence of life threatening thoracic injury, flail chest, tension pneumothorax.
- Loss of palpable pulses distal to an extremity injury.
- Victims of multiple casualty incidents.
It is the philosophy of HealthNet Aeromedical Services to reserve its
treatment and transport capabilities for only the critically ill and
injured. Every transport is reviewed for appropriateness after the
transport and an extensive utilization and quality assurance program is
in effect. However, the difficulty of establishing a definitive
diagnosis in the emergency care setting is widely known and may result
in transfer of an occasional patient who is later proven not to be
critically ill or injured. HealthNet Aeromedical Services strives to
minimize these occurrences.
Click here to learn how to prepare your patient for flight.
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