Air ambulance gets OK to serve more reservations

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By CARSON WALKER / The Associated Press

ROSEBUD, S.D. — An air ambulance program aimed at serving isolated American Indian reservations has been approved by the Indian Health Service in Aberdeen to serve Rosebud and other reservations in four states, according to the project’s backer.

The goal of the venture, announced in April 2006, is to reduce the time it takes to transport a patient to a hospital that can provide a level of care not available in rural areas.

It can take three or four hours for some patients to get the treatment they need because an air ambulance first must fly from its base to the reservation and then to a hospital.

Several tribes are working with Sioux Falls-based Private Air Shuttle Services Network, or PASSNet, to put fixed-wing airplanes on reservations and cut the response times.

The first flights started on the Pine Ridge reservation in January 2007. PASSNet has since flown more than 200 times, mostly to Pine Ridge but also for the Sioux San Indian hospital in Rapid City, the Cheyenne River tribe and several nonnative rural hospitals, said CEO John Warnock.

“And in the course of 200 missions, we were fortunate enough to not lose a single patient,” he said.

Warnock said fixed-wing airplanes are used instead of helicopters because they cost a third less to operate, are faster and can fly in more inclement weather.

Kathy Janis, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and chairwoman of the tribe’s Health and Human Services Committee, said the partnership with PASSNet has helped save money because patients can immediately go where they should and get the care they need faster.

Under the old arrangement, most patients from Pine Ridge went to Rapid City. Now, the choices include Sioux Falls, Denver, Minneapolis, Scottsbluff, Neb., and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Janis said.

“It’s doing us a great deal of good because our contract health dollars go further,” she said.

“We aren’t at anybody’s beck and call. They’re at ours now.”

Funding for the flights comes from the federal programs under which patients are covered: Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Services and Veterans Affairs, Warnock said.

Because of general distrust of the federal government, many elderly Indians aren’t signed up for Medicare. So when they have a heart attack, for example, and need to be flown to Rapid City or Sioux Falls, the tribe picks up the hefty price tag. The company can justify keeping the planes on the reservation by working with the tribe to sign more people up for Medicare, he said.

“Here you have a partnership between the tribe and a company without (additional) government money,” Warnock said. “It did not require a penny from Uncle Sam other than what Uncle Sam pays already.”

The tribal money saved — roughly $200,000 so far for Pine Ridge — goes toward other health care expenses, he said.

The effort to expand to more reservations cleared a hurdle last week when IHS’s Aberdeen Area Office indicated it would approve a medical purchase order number to PASSNet’s partner in Rapid City, Medical Air Rescue Corporation, or MARC, Warnock said.

That will allow the service to pick up patients on any reservation in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa — as long as it can be the first air ambulance to arrive, he said.

In effect, IHS won’t treat PASSNet as a vendor chosen from multiple bids but rather as a provider so it’s one of a half dozen air ambulance programs that compete for emergency flights, Warnock said.

He said IHS took longer than necessary to resolve the issue but he’s pleased with the directive, although it’s still not final.

“We are clear to go forward now and we look forward to working with the Rosebud Service Unit over the next few months as we roll out service to our second major reservation in South Dakota,” Warnock said.

PASSNet’s air ambulance is based at Rapid City but a hangar is planned for Pine Ridge so the airplane eventually will be based where the patients live, Warnock said. After Rosebud, plans are in the works to add airplanes and stations on other reservations in the Dakotas and eventually elsewhere, he said.

IHS officials in Aberdeen did not return phone calls seeking comment.