BILLINGS – Ambulance service to rural parts of Yellowstone County was on the minds of county leaders for years, as wait time grew for help.
So when St Vincent Healthcare added two ground ambulances to its Help Flight fleet, a solution for the ambulance shortage was born.
“It seems like the need just keeps getting bigger,” said Tom Matthews, chief of ambulance operations for Help Flight.
You may normally think of a medical helicopter when you think of St. Vincent’s coveted Help Flight, but now the service has expanded to two Help Flight ambulances, used for ground transport, giving the same critical care.
Nathan Allen is a paramedic for Help Flight ground and showed MTN News around the state-of-the-art medic.
“We can take just about anything from an ICU,” said Allen.
Hitting the road in the spring, Help Flight ground was soon approached by the Yellowstone County commissioners to combat a growing problem with ambulance shortages.
“Patients have been waiting for 45 minutes to an hour or having to come in private vehicle because there’s nothing available to them,” said Matthews.
The ambulances provide inter-facility transportation in Montana and Wyoming. In April, the team began service to rural areas in the area to meet that critical need when resources are stretched thin.
“We evaluated our opportunity there and realized that it’s a way we can serve our community,” said Heather Stamey, the St. Vincent senior director of emergency and critical care.
The crew is busy averaging between seven and 10 trips a day, according to Matthews.
“We successfully have transported 100 patients a month,” he said.
It’s a cheaper option, he says, because traveling by ground versus air is less than a third of the cost to a patient living in rural Montana who may have only had the helicopter as an option.
St. Vincent is now joining just a handful of hospitals in Montana and in the area who use and run ambulances for patient care.
Officials say it’s why there’s already a long legacy of serving the Billings area for 125 years.
