When an ambulance took Danny Poston to Gateway Regional Medical Center in summer 2006 reeling from a ruptured pancreas, staffers there made a quick decision that probably saved his life: They radioed in a medical helicopter. “I don’t remember a thing,” said Poston, 59, of Granite City, who, after being ferried by air to Saint Louis University Hospital, developed a score of complications that required four surgeries and a six-month hospital stay. He ended up recovering, but Poston thinks it probably wouldn’t have happened without the medevac ride across the Mississippi River.”I was really gone,” he said recently, remembering the near-death experience. “Just gone.” Poston is one of countless Metro East patients who relied on air ambulances to take them from local hospitals to larger, better-equipped facilities in St. Louis with the technology and know-how to save lives. For them, the fast transport, which leapfrogs traffic jams and construction, is often the difference between life and death. But some are questioning whether the frequent chopper trips, while common in many areas with smaller regional hospitals, are putting patients with less-than-life-threatening injuries at higher risk. “There are more. Across the nation, there’s been a huge increase in medical helicopters,” said Justin T. Green, an ex-military helicopter pilot who now represents victims of medical copter accidents as a Midtown Manhattan lawyer. The additional usage, Green and others said, is sparked by a knot of issues bridging transportation and health care – from the availability of contracted copter companies and a push by hospitals to treat patients quicker, to insurance concerns and a void of local hospitals that can treat serious injuries.
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