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Minnie Hamilton Health System

Critical Care Transport Program

The Need

In the past crtically injured or ill patients in the rural areas of West Virginia, have had little options available to them when they required a continuity of care from one facility to another.

The continued development of advanced and sophisticated therapies and techniques, the medical, nursing and EMS professions have enhanced the ability to monitor and maintain the physiologic requirements of the body in situations of extreme stress, illness, injury and compromise.

We also have the ability to intervene in situations where the patient has suffered severe, life-threatening insults while preventing irreversible damage. The primary goal is to offer patiants a specialized and unique service to maintain or imporve a patient's condition.

The hospitals in this part of the state have had to wait up to four hours for a critical care team trom Charleston to arrive. After the team has arrived it takes another ninety minutes to two hours to transport that patient from this facility to one ot the major trauima medical centers in West Virginia.

The Truck

In order for this to take place several pieces of equipment were needed to be put into service, with the first piece being a critical care transport truck.

This truck is large enough to carry a three-person crew, the patient and the specialized equipment needed to monitor and treat the patient. Some of the equipment that will be put into service includes:

1. A patient ventilator that will aid the patient when they are unable to breathe on their own.

2. Advanced cardiac monitors that have the ability to "shock" a heart back into a beating heart and also have the ability to control the patients heart rate. Advanced invasive monitoring will enable the crew to monitor cardiac output, respiratory effort and cerebral pressure.

3. There will be space to allow the crews access to all emergency medications and critical I.V. drips. This truck also is equipped with the ability to transport the critical pediatric patient in an isolett.

In conjunction with Critical Care Transports, this team and equipment will be utilized as a first response vehicle to respond to a mass causality incident such as a mulit-vehicle accident and also respond with mutual aid to the outlying EMS agencies on the scene of a critically ill or inured patient. This team is also trained in hazardous material recognition and response and will have the capability to isolate and decontaminate patients.