Yes Helipad vs. Stop Helipad
11 Apr 2006
The Helipad debate seems to be escalating on Potrero Hill. There has been a rash of new flyers supporting the helipad, although I suspect that the flyers are the act of a single individual rather than a group.
The ‘Stop Helipad’ folks on the other hand seem to be gaining momentum, and it appears that other neighborhood groups are opposing the Helipad efforts from the looks of this e-mail:
ALL STOP HELIPAD neighbors
Please make every effort to attend:
East Mission Improvement Association Meeting Q + A with Supervisor Sophie MaxwellWednesday, April 12, 7:00 - 9:00PM
SF General Hospital
Main Building, 1001 Potrero Avenue, Room 2A6We appreciate the opportunity to hear Supervisor Maxwell on the matter of the helipad and thank the East Mission Neighborhood Association for addressing this significant community issue.
Photo by: prawnpie
22 Responses to “Yes Helipad vs. Stop Helipad”
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- Yes Helipad vs. Stop Helipad:
If you want a helicopter rescue after a BMW hits you, then you’ll need to be injured in one of the surrounding counties, NOT within the City of San Francisco. Helicopter rescues will NOT be made inside SF, where ground ambulance will continue to provide all rescue services. (See the SF Planning Department’s Helipad Initial Study, p. 8.)
In fact, 92% of patients using the proposed SFGH helipad will be flying in from Northern California hospitals as far north as the Oregon border and they will ALL need to have $5000-$15000 to pay for such hospital helicopter transfer.
I see. So people outside San Francisco city limits deserve to die to protect our property values from occasional helicopter sounds. As do people who have five to fifteen grand to pay for the ride (which most insurance policies cover). Glad we have our priorities straight here in wild & crazy bohemian Frisco.
I am glad you understand Michelle. I wish to sleep soundly at night and remain undisturbed by the sound of rotors bringing hope to a mangled child. Its not my child so I don’t care. I do not want any of those dangerous “chopper” things flying over my home with a desperately ill mother. Its not my mother so I don’t care. I want to drive my BMW how I like and where I like and if I run you over too bad. If however I get badly injured in an accident in my BMW by god that helicopter better be there and take me to hospital. All clear now?
While Michelle’s idea in theory sounds great…it sounds to me like the helipad would be used almost EXCLUSIVELY as a transfer hub for non-critical non-trama patients. If that is in fact the case, then yes it is more important to me to keep my property values than to have a Northern Californian/Oregonian shave a half hour off his commute.
Let’s not let this become bleeding heart (literally) issue. It should be about being practical and fair. In times of negative budgets, is this really needed. If it really is needed, does it need to go here at SF General? Why not at one of the other SF hospitals (because those folks don’t want it either?)? There is a new hospital going in on Van Ness. Why not plan for it there? How about Chriissy field - an old airstrip? How about on a Navy ship parked down on the pier? What about Oakland? What are the plus/minus arguments for each option? While I’m sure every minute is important in trauma situations, is the extra 8-10 minutes tolerable vs. spending money we don’t have, to fly on down to Stanford? All for patients who are not SF residents. Why does it have to be SF General? I’d guess that SF General is the path of least resistance. This seems to be about ego and boasting - so that some politician can say “I helped create a Trauma Center in SF”. That we don’t really need, can’t afford, and probably have better places for one (if we could afford one) is secondary.
As a former flight physician trained at a large regional medical center in the midwest, helicopter transfers are a very integral to an academic hospital’s ability to a provide higher level of medical care for its surrounding communities. On the flip side, I would expect 2 - 5 flights a day flying over my house to be an excessive amount of noise pollution that would be difficult for anybody to support.
This is fantastic plan for the hospital to make money in order to push out the uninsured people that the SF General is supposed to look out for. And of our course it’s in the Mission (what better place for the hospital propaganda machine to hand out helipcopters toys to little kids)
As for the revenue stream, this is what the hospital fully admits to in their 2003 Helipad Feasibility Study, “…[A]n influx of air transport patients from the broader suburban and rural regions of Northern California…..will contribute to a beneficial payer mix at the hospital.”
I had insurance and I went to the SF General with meningitis and was told it would be an 8 hour wait. Thankfully I had the common sense/capacity to go to another hospital. With rich insured people flying in from other hospitals with a broken leg, my wait would probably haven 16 hours.
Not to mention, there’s a helipad in the mission bay hospital less than a mile away.
Michelle, hopefully you don’t live in potrero, i’d hate for a helicopter to wipe out 2 full cities blocks in your community…
My family would be directly affected as the flight path would go right over my house. It’s bad enough that my kids are getting air pollution from the freeways next door, now we have to deal with noise pollution, too, and for what?
Can’t the hospital use the existing (not used) helipad near the piers…why do they have to negatively impact a vibrant, child-friendly neighborhood with a plan that does nothing to benefit us residents?
It’s depressing enough dealing with terrible local schools and rising crime levels in my neighborhood…now I have to worry that I might not be able to sell my house when/if we decide to move to get a better quality of life for our kids!
I think we all would put up with a helicopter close overhead, and even the danger it puts us in, for flights that would actually save lives. So here’s the deal, let’s ask SFGH to ONLY use the helipad in emergencies. Not likely, since that’s a very small percentage of the planned flights. And, once it’s in, there is NO LIMIT to the number of flights that may land and take off. Anyone injured out-of-town has any number of hospitals within reach of a helicopter. So the argument that we don’t care about out-of-towners is just not accurate. But we do care about San Francisco, just as Marin cares about Marin, and San Jose cares about San Jose. And this helipad just flat out doesn’t help us. SFGH is already overcrowded and often not able to meet the needs of our own citizens. This is not for us, and it’s just not fair.
As someone who lives two blocks from SFGH, I would HATE having the helipad here. It’s bad enough getting woken up once a month at 6:30 a.m. when traffic copters film fender benders on 101. It would drive me absolutely insane getting woken up every other night at 3 a.m. because some drunken yahoo rolled their car and had to be rescued via a helicopter that sounds like it’s flying directly over my bed!
It’s not about the noise or property values. It’s about quality of health services for San Franciscans who cannot afford healthcare being pushed aside by wealthy, insured, and non-acute residents of other cities and counties.
Besides, no one suffering a trauma/accident in the city of SF will be transported to SFGH by helicopter. By the time a helicopter is summoned from Concord, where they are based, the victim could be taken by ground ambulance to SFGH.
In San Francisco when Code 3 calls (presumed life threatening calls) come to 911, an ambulance or fire paramedic arrives within 4.5 minutes 85% of the time. Advanced life support ambulances arrive within 7 minutes 95% of the time.
- Per the Hospital’s own publications only 7% of patients transported from outside the city via helicopter will be acute accident victims.
- This means that 93% will be stable patients.
- Overcrowding will increase as no new staff will be hired to care for these additional patients.
- Emergency patients were diverted away from SFGH 21% of the time in 2005 due to overcrowding. This issue continues today. SFGH is the only hospital in San Francisco that is required to take patients regardless of their health insurance. It is the safety net for the city’s underinsured and underserved.
- The current estimated cost to build the helipad is $5.7 million. It will then have to be rebuilt because the current building does not meet seismic standards. That money would be better spent on other programs that could really save lives.
Check out the facts at www.stophelipad.com.
I don’t know where people are getting the idea that there are helipads elsewhere in the City. There’s not. Did you forget about hurricane Katrina, the Earthquake, the Oakland hills fire?
Helicopters will come, shutdown drop off their patients and leave. Probably rarely. Compare that with the morning news helicopters hovering all morning over hodspital curve. This is a world class trauma center for the Bay Area. Not just for the people of San Francisco. The people around Stanford, Eden Hospital, Washington Hospital, John Muir, Valley Care, and San Jose don’t seem to have all these problems that have been made up by the antihelicopter people. So if you get in a crash on 280 or highway 1, your injured ass is going to Stanford. As far as the “facts” most are wrong, they have been slanted towards an antihelipad view.
Shit happens in the Bay area NIMBY people, wait for the next earthquake when another freeway collapses, or bridge and you can’t get to SFGH by road.
Mark makes my earlier point. There are no other helipads in the city. Why is that? I want to see an analysis that tells me why a helipad has to go in to SFGH. What are the plus/minus issues concerning putting this helipad in another location vs. PH. As mentioned, there is a new hospital going in on Van Ness (Cathedral Hill Hotel) in the future. Why not there - in the center of town? For the same money, could we staff a small trauma center on an old Navy boat (less prone to earthquake damage) down on the pier?
Speaking of making stuff up…Just curious, I didn’t see Mark site any studies - Do the folks near those other hospitals really not mind the helipads? Given a choice, would they vote against them? [not trying to pick on Mark here - just addressing his note]
And what are the survival rates for trauma patients on, say. a 13 minute copter ride vs. a 20 minute (to Stanford perhaps) copter ride? Not sure, but it seems relevant to making a multi-millioin dollar investment (again, $ we don’t really have in the budget).
I want to be CONVINCED that this helipad absolutely must go in at SFGH. Hasn’t happened yet…
Hello Mark,
I have lived on Kansas St. for over thirty years and I have yet to see a traffic or a morning news helicopter “hovering over hospital curve”!
NIMBY has changed to NIMS (Not in my sky)!
I wonder how many anti-helipad people are pro-blue angels?
Well Flippy, if the helicopters came to PH just one week a year it might impact my opinion. But the prediction in EVERY DAY (and night).
One thing I have noticed is that it is easier to change peoples opinions on issues (through debate, facts, etc.) than to actually make them care. If you are more concerned about two helicopter flights a day than the plight of a dying person, then you obviously do not care and it is not worth my time to debate you. Maybe you would feel different if your life depended on a ride to the hospital, but maybe not.
Excellent point Flippy. As you’ll note in my previous post - facts are exactly what I am looking for to justify this project.
It didn’t take long for the bleeding heart (sorry) card to be played again. It’s not all about caring. It’s about the best location and the best use of money and resources. Again, I have yet to be convinced that this helipad HAS to be at SFGH vs. another location in SF.
I am a emergency medical services helicopter pilot who has lived for many years in San Francisco. There are a few observations and comments that I would like to make:
Wow, so many of you are so very misinformed in regards to why patients are flown, where they are flown from, how often they are flown, who pays and who doesn’t, and how this might impact a neighborhood where a hospital helipad resides.
Yes, hospitals primarily exist to make money. A hospital with helipad will probably make even more money.
At least 30% of the people that I fly are are nearly indigent- but patients are not screened prior to flight; if someone needs to get to a trauma center within that “golden hour”, then they will be flown, regardless of their ability to pay. The company that I work for does not pursue patients who cannot pay- the flight is simply written off. We are providing a service to communities, and do not discriminate when a life is hanging in the balance.
Choice helipad locations: highest level trauma center. High level rooftop helipad, where the noise footprint of an EMS helicopter will have the least impact on the community, and where approaches and departures can be flown with the least amount of obstructions.
Also- some of the modern helicopters are very quiet. The helicopters of yesteryear (read: Hueys) are no longer utilized because they are costly, noisy, large and impractically slow and inefficient. My helicopter is so quiet that it cannot be heard by the human ear when it is n the helipad, only one city block away. The newer technology is truly amazing.
I do think that it is rather selfish to live comfortably close to a trauma center, and at the same time feel the god-given right to deny others access to that facility…. sometime, when you are driving along PCH at night, south or north of San Francisco, and your car fly off the cliff, you will have a change of heart.
Dave,
Great to have your perspective on this discussion.
Please add more. Perhaps you have some answers to some of the other questions you posed?
Why patients are flown?
Where they are flown from?
How often they are flown?
Who pays and who doesn’t? (any other info other than ability to pay? Who REALLY pays? HMO’s? Taxpayers? or…?)
How this might impact a neighborhood where a hospital helipad resides?
I’ll add some others…
Is SFGH the only option for a helipad in SF?
Are there other hospitals here that could accommodate a helipad?
What is the difference in time, if any, vs. flying to Stanford for most of your flights?
Out of all the flights you made in 2007, how many lives would have been saved by that time difference (if there is a time difference) between SF and Stanford?
Would you feel safer landing on a ship or on a helipad down by the piers?
For the 1000 or so people who live within a block of the helipad, would one expect the value of their home to be negatively impacted by the construction of a helipad and the subsequent arrival of regular air traffic? What about the impact to those within a 1/2 mile radius (or more) who will hear those aircraft as they approach and take-off from the helipad (admittedly quieter than older Huey’s)? Should they be compensated in some way if their home values take a hit as a result of a new helipad?
If your had $4 million to spend, would you save more lives by spending it on a helipad, or on other social services?
Yeah - I have a few more questions, but let’s start with those.
-
btw - I’m glad we have helicopter rescue teams. But I have yet to be convinced that they need to land at SFGH. Doesn’t matter if I’m on the gurney or someone else.
I’ll try to answer a few questions:
Who pays for the flight?
In most cases, the HEMS providers are private companies (not government programs). This means that the patient’s health insurance provider pays for the flight- not the taxpayer. Some HEMS providers do not pursue collections against those who cannot pay (my company just takes it as a loss), and just accept it as part of the cost of providing a service to the community.
Is abiliy to pay a factor?
No. Trauma patients are not screened prior to transport. If the determination is made that a patient needs to be flown, then that patient will be flown. There is no discussion regarding insurance coverage until the conclusion of treatment. However, if a patient is conscious, they have the same right to refuse a flight as they do to refuse a ground EMS unit’s services.
Where are patients flown from?
Wherever the accident/illness occurred- roadway, beach, residence, hospital (transfers), etc…
Why are patients flown?
I am a pilot, not a medical crew member- therefore, I do not make that determination. That being said, you need to Google the following term: “The Golden Hour”.
Time, or more accurately, a lack of time, is the reason that patients are flown. The pick-up point might be not so far from a hospital, but due to rush hour traffic, it might take far too long to transport by ground. it’s about saving a life, brain, tissue, heart muscle.
How often are patients flown?
There are too many variables to be able to provide an honest answer to that question. If Fire / EMS does not call for a helicopter at an accident scene, or if there are no patient transfers to/from other hospitals, then the helicopter sits quietly on the pad. That being said, I would say that most patient transfers that are done by helicopter are the following: neonatal transfers to a neonatal facility, high risk OB to a women’s hospital, cardiac patients to a cardiac facility. Patients are always transferred by ground if they are stable and can tolerate a ground transfer.
Which hospital should have a helipad?
The hospitals that can offer the highest level of trauma care / burn care / cardiac care / OB & neonatal care. It is very common for a helicopter to fly right over several hospitals with a trauma patient onboard, while enroute to an appropriate trauma center. Why? Because the patient needs a nigh level of care, or they will no survive- all hospitals are NOT created equal.
Believe it or not, helicopters have landed at nearby hospitals with trauma patients, and have been told that they need to go elsewhere! Every hospital has an ER, but many cannot deal with trauma- they simply do not have the equipment or the qualified staff on duty or on call.
Stanford, etc… I used to live next door to UCSF Hospital. I don’t live in California right now. Distance / time= helicopter flies at about 2 miles per minute, as the crow flies. You will have to do the measuring.
That said, trauma patient flights need to go to the CLOSEST APPROPRIATE TRAUMA CENTER. When we leve an accident scene, that is where we will be headed, because a life is hanging in the balance.
Social services:
I have transported infants who have had been ejected from a motor vehicle during a major collision, children who have drowned or who have been run over by a car while riding their bicycles…. my experience during those flights was that a really good social services program was not going to help them survive their injuries.
Some people in this forum seem not to want to accept the reality that we are talking about the preservation of life here- that somebody’s mother might live because a helicopter is landing at the hospital. As is usually the case in a metropolis, people are more concerned with their own personal wealth and making sure that the world does not start knocking on their own little door….
SFGH or elsewhere:
As a person who has actually had be transported by helicopter after a horrible accident where 2 deer ran in front of my motorcycle and almost killed me, I will say this- until you or a loved one have to be transported by helicopter to the nearest appropriate trauma facility in order to survive your injuries, you cannot make the statement that, “it doesn’t matter if I’m on the gurney or someone else.”
What I am saying is that when it is your child who is bleeding to death in your arms, you will not think the way that you are thinking right now; you will think differently. To state otherwise is simply a callous statement designed to insulate you from your true feelings- that your property value is more important to you than the life of another.
I lived in San Francisco for most of my life- I was an artist, a vegan, a protester,
etc… it was not until I moved away and lived in other communities that I realized how conflicted and callous city people can be- they worry about the environment and they recycle and ride their bikes to work, but they will walk right over somebody bleeding to death in the street. They are selective with their love and concern, and they tend to choose to be concerned with things that are faceless, because dealing with a real face or a beating heart is much too personal for them- they avoid contact with most things that have the potential to disrupt the balance of their lives that they have struggled for so many years to achieve. They can only be passionate about things that they are able to hold at a distance.
Safer landing on a ship / piers?
It doesn’t matter to me where I land- but if the patient is going to have to be transported by ground after that, then what was the point of flying them?
If I had $4 mil to spend:
I would probably publish a newspaper that documents how much money celebrities make, and how little they really contribute to this world.
That said, the question (restated) is, “who do you save”? That is between me and my god. Who do you want to save?
1000 or so people:
While this is only my opinion, I believe that things would unfold this way:
1. Initially, perceived property values might go down ever so slightly, out of fear.
2. After residents experience the fact that the helipad will actually be used so infrequently, and experience first-hand that the ambient sounds of the city mask most of the helicopter noise that is generated during those infrequent operations, that property values will go right back up.
Compensation?
In a word, “no”. In regards to life, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. You live in a city- accept the reality that you live there with thousands of other people…that you are not alone.
I do want to make one thing perfectly clear- Even though I fly a helicopter, I experience no pleasure when an aircraft flies over my house. If it is an EMS helicopter, then I understand that someone out there is probably dying and that their needs presently outweigh my own.
The people (or, rather, the well-to-do property owners) of San Francisco need to re-visit the meaning of life. The meaning of life is “to live”.