SouthCare Helicopter hits 4,000 missions

Thx basketcase. Appreciate the comment 🙂

I think it’s comforting to know the service is there ready to respond to emergencies in the ACT. The chopper ranging into south-east NSW only ensures the service is consistently utilized and as MR Evil wrote NSW contributes for the choppers use anyway.

Good shot of a hover. The turbine exhaust is forced down, blurring the background.

But I still wonder why the chopper was based here, and not in our neighbouring city, considering it’s main sole purpose is to transport the folk of New South Wales.

Mr Evil mentions that “The NSW Govt also pays a portion of the operating cost of the SouthCare helicopter.” Do we know what this portion is ? Well might not it be better if the chopper was in NSW, and WE paid a portion of the operating costs that is used on our citizens. After all we (fortunately ) hardly use the service. NSW dud us out of dough by using our hospital, and is the chopper service another example?

IIRC from the last Open Day I attended, something like 70% of Southcare missions are “transporting”… however this heading encompasses newborns and country accident victims/acute patients who have already been born/admitted/stabilised in regional hospitals but need higher level treatment.

In addition to the speed of the transport, using Southcare also means that NICU/intensive care/paramedic expertise and equipment are brought TO THE PATIENT in advance of their arrival at TCH.

carnardly said :

rescuing? Or just transporting patients from regional hospitals?

If someone’s condition is bad enough, yes, the helicopter will be called out to transport them to either Canberra Hospital, or in some cases to Sydney.

I’m sure if you were in a really bad way, you too would appreciate the difference an hour long helicopter flight could make to your chances of survival, compared to a three hour ambulance road trip.

rescuing? Or just transporting patients from regional hospitals?

There’s nothing quite like hearing the drone of that Bell 412 on a cold, still Canberra night/morning as it heads out on another potentially life-saving mission

Yup. Very sobering every time we hear it heading out over Weston Creek, then back a couple of hours later making a bee line for Woden.

After so many trips, we can usually identify any chopper that isn’t Southcare.

Sometimes the way that the sound carries is surprising. One morning last autumn I was walking at Narrabundah Hill and could hear the chopper engine so loud I could swear it was taking off from over the back near Rivers bushfire shed… turned out it was way up high bound for TCH from over beyond the Brindies.

MERC600 said :

Well I did wonder why the chopper was based here in the ACT, and not NSW.
I have heard it has been used a couple of times in the Namadgi park, but surely 99.9% of the time it’s rescuing the good people of New South Wales.

Maybe because Canberra Hospital is the biggest hospital in the region, and some of the SouthCare helicopter’s missions involve patient transfers to/from that hospital?

The NSW Govt also pays a portion of the operating cost of the SouthCare helicopter.

There’s nothing quite like hearing the drone of that Bell 412 on a cold, still Canberra night/morning as it heads out on another potentially life-saving mission.

Well I did wonder why the chopper was based here in the ACT, and not NSW.
I have heard it has been used a couple of times in the Namadgi park, but surely 99.9% of the time it’s rescuing the good people of New South Wales.