AIRLINE SOON TO TRANSPORT PATIENTS INSTATE

When a sick or injured person needs to travel to or from a medical facility, the shorter the trip the better.

Cape Central Airways, which operates a charter air service at the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport, can shorten to hours a trip that might take days in a ground ambulance.

Although licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to provide interstate air ambulance service, Cape Central soon will be licensed to also give in-state patient transfers.

"We've been operating with specifications from the Federal Aviation Administration since July," said Mark Seesing, director of operations at Cape Central. "We now operate with either one or both of the legs of the flight outside of Missouri.

"But we can't take an in-state transfers."

Seesing said the company is in the final stages of receiving the necessary state licensing.

Although Cape Central has provided air ambulance service since 1950 through the credentials of a local hospital, this will be the first time the company has operated the service itself.

The air ambulance service includes a full staff of doctors, nurses and emergency medical personnel.

"It's operated much like a ground ambulance or helicopter ambulance," Seesing said. "We've got a staff now of about 17 individuals from throughout Southeast Missouri."

Cape Girardeau's central location in the nation means there's a good market for such services.

"A lot of times, someone will be vacationing in Florida but might have to go the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.," he said. "Some of our destinations have been Phoenix, Ariz. or Texas or Minnesota, and we're able to get them there in a matter of hours instead of days."

Seesing said that although the aircraft are equipped and certified to handle patients in critical condition, a majority are stable when they're transported.

"A majority will be a patient moved from one location to some type of specialty clinic, or from a hospital to a nursing home in some other part of the country," he said. "Basically, our patients are stabilized but still in need of care."

Air ambulance service is a market that's growing for those companies able to gain certification.

That's because the FAA has stepped up regulations, pushing some operators out of business. The added regulations also have toughened training requirements.

"Several years ago, it was looked upon as being a type of passenger transfer, not necessarily a patient transfer," Seesing said. "The training between aeromedical staff and the flight crew was not as detailed as it is now."

The FAA also is ending the use of air ambulance brokers people who would act as middle men between the patient, hospital or insurance company and the air ambulance service.

The brokers were able to secure the ambulance flights for a percentage of the charge. The problem, Seesing said, was the brokers rarely were interested in service beyond cutting the deal.

"There was a huge fee paid to the broker, but that broker wasn't accountable to the patient in terms of service," Seesing said.

Cape Central uses four aircraft for its ambulance service. Two Mitsubishi MU-2, turbo-prop airplanes are used for long trips, as is a Cessna 340 pressurized twin-engine plane. For shorter trips, there's a Beechcraft Baron.

Seesing said the state certification will increase business at the municipal airport. He said ambulance service can add more than 500 boardings at the airport.

City officials have tried in vain the past two years to increase boardings. If boardings exceed 10,000 annually, the airport is eligible for $400,000 in FAA entitlement funds for airport improvements.

"Right now we're on hold for some in-state trips waiting for out licensing," Seesing said. "There is some call for in-state transports."