Schneck Medical Center in Seymour is the newest base for St. Vincent’s StatFlight emergency medical services aircraft.
The bright green helicopter had been stationed in North Vernon at St. Vincent Jennings Hospital for years but recently was moved west to Seymour to better serve the area, a St. Vincent official said.
There are four other bases around the state: in Anderson, Danville, Rushville and West Lafayette.
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Schneck’s helipad, located directly south of the cancer center and east of the Jackson County Emergency Medical Services station, was built in 2004 thanks to donations through Schneck’s Employee Partners Invested in Caring (EPiC) program and the Schneck Foundation.
“From a primary base at Schneck Medical Center, StatFlight will be better positioned between our hospitals in North Vernon, Salem and Bedford,” said Ryan Moore, chief communications and marketing officer at St. Vincent Health in Indianapolis.
“The move will also position the medical helicopter closer to where they receive the greatest number of transfer requests.”
Dennis Brasher, executive director of Jackson County EMS, said having a helicopter stationed in Seymour is going to help with wrecks and other incidents involving trauma in the rural parts of the county and Interstate 65.
“It’s going to help us get those people to trauma centers for definitive care quicker,” he said.
A StatFlight helicopter can be available any time of the day and is in the air within minutes of a dispatch call, Moore said.
The helicopter transport service is a partnership between St. Vincent Health and PHI Air Medical, another emergency medical air service provider. Helicopters fly within a 150-mile radius of the bases, covering the entire state of Indiana.
According to the StatFlight website, about 40 percent of the people it transports are trauma patients, 50 percent are cardiac patients, 5 percent are pediatric and the rest have various medical conditions.
It’s not the first time Seymour’s hospital has housed an emergency air transport service. Beginning in 2004, Louisville-based STATCARE kept a helicopter at Schneck’s helipad to transport critical care and trauma patients to bigger hospitals for specialized care. That service later was moved elsewhere.