Outsourcing Dispatch Consolidated Communications Centers Offer ...

Outsourcing Dispatch Consolidated
Communications Centers Offer Alternative to
Stand-Alone Dispatching
by Marvin McLellan
Centralized dispatch centers have
long been integral to large rotor and
fixed-wing operations. Only in the
last decade have they begun finding
a place in air medical operations,
particularly with the growth of
community-based air ambulance
programs. But an increasing
number of hospitals are beginning
to see consolidated dispatch centers
as a virtual panacea for
communications headaches.
With side-by-side
communications specialists fielding
simultaneous calls and dispatching
helicopters to disparate, and distant
geographic points, operations such
as LifeCom in Omaha, Nebraska,
STAT MedEvac in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, and Air Evac in West
Plains, Missouri, are proving you
don't have to be in a helicopter's
backyard to send it where it's needed.
These companies are providing a
new alternative to traditional, standalone
air ambulance dispatching
centers. And they're showing both
hospital- and community-based air
medical programs they no longer
need to equip, staff and carry the
financial burden of their own
centers. Instead, they can outsource
those functions to enjoy greater
savings, continued seamless service,
and fewer headaches.
Evolution and Revolution
Centralized dispatch centers are
largely the result of evolution — and
revolution. Air Evac, for example,
began as a community-based air
ambulance program in 1985. As it
grew to provide service to additional
communities with additional
aircraft, its communications function
remained at its West Plains
headquarters, adding only
infrastructure and dispatchers.
Today, it serves 36 bases in ten
Midwest and Plains states,
dispatching more than 1,200 flights
per month, along with eight ground
ambulances and two rural fire
protection districts.
STAT MedEvac, on the other
hand, began as a hospital-based
concern and grew into a consortium
venture, operating 14 medical
transport helicopters in
LifeCom fields more than 60,000 calls per year, providing flight coordination, flight following and logistical
support for air medical programs in 31 states.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Maryland.
Its communications center handles
more than 600 missions per month.
LifeCom (a division of Air
Methods Corporation) combines the
two approaches. Serving both
hospital — and community-based
programs, it is the nation's largest
air medical service communications
center. It was founded by Rocky
Mountain Holdings, in 1997, to
serve its hospital-based air medical
programs, then grew to offer a fixedwing
network and ground
ambulance communications center.
Today LifeCom fields more than
5,000 calls per month and provides
flight coordination, flight following,
and logistical support for air medical
programs in 31 states, and for more
than 60,000 air medical transport
requests each year. It takes calls
from communities as remote as
Death Valley and as urban as
Atlanta — and it's all but invisible to
the entities placing the call for help.
The communications center's
existence evolved largely from the
consolidation of the air medical
industry. When Air Methods
acquired Rocky Mountain Holdings
in 2002, LifeCom was part of the
package. In addition to working
with the numerous smaller hospitaloperated
dispatch offices that come
with being the nation's largest air
ambulance service provider, Air
Methods found itself with three
regional communications centers
serving the company's independent
programs. One, of course, was
LifeCom. The others were located
in Rialto, California, at Mercy Air,
and in St. Louis, Missouri, at ARCH
Air Medical Service, Inc. (both
entities are part of the LifeNet
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Communication center specialists field simultaneous calls and dispatch helicopters to disparate and distant
geographic points.
operations of Air Methods).
Interactive mapping, real-time
flight dispatching, online weather
radar and global positioning system
(GPS) technology enable
communications specialists to locate
accident scenes quickly and pinpoint
landing zones to within a few meters
— even in unfamiliar areas.
All this technology, along with
response providers, hospitals and
other agencies involved in the air
medical response and patient
transport process.
These growing technological
resources and capabilities are
enabling communications centers to
absorb other dispatch centers and
extend outsourcing services to other
hospital- as well as communitybased
programs — regardless of
their location.
Outsourcing Benefits
training class for dispatchers costs
about the same, regardless of
the number of participants. And
the essential wiring for a
communications center serving
multiple programs versus one is also
similar. By providing the services on
a much larger level and from one
location, an outsourced dispatch
center can do the job more
efficiently and then pass the
benefits along to programs. It's a
significant source of savings, the
communications centers maintain.
But for many program directors,
a primary benefit to outsourcing the
communications function, in
addition to the cost savings, is the
increased internal efficiencies.
Outsourcing dispatch enables
program directors to focus more on
the aviation and medicine that go
into life-saving flights and worry less
about the logistics of making them
happen.
Marvin McLellan, is director of
marketing for LifeCom.
two-way radios, telephone, data and
alphanumeric paging are woven into
a single work station for each
dispatcher. From any given desk,
dispatchers then can conduct
conference calls, patch calls and
transfer flight and patient
information between flight medical
crews, pilots, ground emergency
LifeCom Director Bill Irland
says the outsourcing idea is catching
on, especially with the increasing
financial pressures imposed by
healthcare reimbursement changes.
"It's a common conundrum," he said.
"Programs are being asked — and
expected — to provide increased
service at lower costs. There are
only so many things you can do to
save before you start sacrificing
quality. But outsourcing dispatch
services is a simple yet effective way
to provide a higher level of quality
while still saving money."
Medical dispatching is complex.
Not only does it require gathering
medical and demographic data, but
also it requires an understanding of
aviation and medical terminology —
not to mention the computers and
software. It takes several months to
train qualified dispatchers and
competitive salary and benefits
packages to keep them.
Of course, many savings come
from sheer economy of scale. A
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67

continued from page 33
you were in the air?
Carl Brady: Well, I've had 9 engine
failures in my life, in the old 47
series.
Carol Brady (to Carl): What about
that day you called me and said
"Honey, I just rolled a helicopter up
in a ball?"
Carl Brady: Yes, I had one accident.
Once, the engine quit and I
autorotated down from 75 feet to a
road on a side hill. I got the right
skid on the road and the left skid
was still 3 feet in the air, and we
rolled over to the left. Nobody was
hurt. I wasn't hurt. But it sure tore it
up. The blade hit the ground, of
course, and when that happens
everything turns to crap.
HAI: Did you ever fly that helicopter
again?
Carl Brady: Oh yeah. In fact, I think
that's the one that was dedicated
yesterday.
HAI: It's difficult to separate Era's
from the story of the Brady family as
a whole. Mrs. Brady, you've
commented on how important family
was to both of you as you built your
business. How did you and Mr.
Brady first meet?
Carol Brady: He was a soda jerk,
and I took a job as a cashier. There
were 6 boys working there. Out of
the 6, one was married, and the
other five put a quarter in the paper
cup to see who could get the first
date with me.
Carl Brady: And I won, so I got the
first date with her.
Carol Brady: He told the owner, "I'd
like to use the van to drive Carol
home." And the owner said, "Well
that's ok." I worked the shift from six
to eleven at night, so when my
stepmother took me to work next,
Carl said, "you don't have to pick
Carol up at 11 o'clock. I have the
company van, I'll drop her off." Well,
that pleased my stepmother.
(Laughs.) Carl said the first time he
took me home, I had my hand on the
door the whole time.
Carl Brady: She had her hand on the
handle all the way home. The minute
I stopped in front of the house, she
opened the door and ran outside and
68 Winter 2003-2004
looked at me.
Carol Brady: Well, my stepmother
told me these guys were "whirly!" I
didn't know what "whirly" was, and I
was a pretty shy girl.
Carl Brady: I wasn't whirly. (Smiles.)
I thought I was I guess.
Carol Brady: Then Carl went to
Seattle, because the owner of the ice
cream parlor was letting the men go
so he could hire women, because of
the war. He started going to the
University of Washington, and would
hitchhike over every weekend to see
me. The first time he came to see
me, he brought a bouquet of flowers
for my stepmother and a corsage for
me. He had written a letter asking
me out to dinner and a show. He did
everything proper, you know. It was
so proper that it made my
stepmother mad, because I had a
stepsister that was five months older
that nobody was asking out. My
stepmother said, "you can't go out
with him, he's too whirly."
Carl Brady: So we snuck around till
we eloped.
Carol Brady: We were married in
the Methodist church. His friend
stood up with him, and mine with
me.
HAI: How hard was the commute
from Yakima to Anchorage when
you first moved to Alaska?
Carol Brady: It was very hard. The
airplane took off from Yakima at
7:30 in the evening, and sometimes
I'd have all three kids. We'd have to
wait in Seattle for a second plane to
take off at 5:30 in the morning, and
I'd get into Anchorage and Carl
would be all dressed up and swifted
up, and here I'd just spent 6 hours in
this old rattley DC-6, dead tired, and
couldn't wait to go to bed. And he
was so excited about me coming. It
was hard. We did that for 12 years.
HAI: Was it a tough decision to
move the family to Alaska?
Carol Brady: I actually sat down and
wrote a 5 page letter to Carl and said
he was either going to have to move
back to Yakima, or we were going to
have to move to Alaska. So Carl
called me on the phone. I couldn't
call very often because it was 75
dollars, and that's how much our
house payment was! So he called and
said, "I'd love for my family to come
to Alaska, I just never thought you'd
come." I told him that it's important
we have our family together.
HAI: Mrs. Brady, you once soloed a
Taylor Craft.
Carol Brady: Yes. I have a license. I
heard Carl tell somebody that I'd
never fly, so I walked out and hired
the man that taught Carl to teach
me. At the time I was expecting! But
I learned, and I landed twice by
myself, and that's it. Just to show
that I could do it.
Carl Brady: Yep. I watched her do
it. With my heart pounding.
Carol Brady: But I didn't have a
desire to continue. I was more
interested in the children.
HAI: And then there was the Mrs.
America pageant?
Carol Brady: I had been a model
when I was in Yakima, and when we
moved to Alaska I walked into a
store called the Hat Box and the lady
asked me to model for her. I
immediately made friends with the
other ladies here. When the
Anchorage Women's Club asked me
to run for Mrs. Anchorage in 1963,
Carl said, "Tell 'em you're too old."
So I turned back to them and said,
"I'll be happy to!"
HAI: And you won?
Carol Brady: I won the Mrs.
Anchorage, and won the Mrs.
Alaska, and went to the Mrs.
America pageant. I felt I could have
won it, but I had a five year old, and
he was more important to me than
running around the country.
HAI: Aside from flying, Mr. Brady,
you've had a political career. You've
served in both houses of the state
legislature, and you're very close to
Senator Stevens. How did that
relationship begin?
Carl Brady: We both ran for the
State House in 1965. We were both
elected and we lived together in
Juneau.
HAI: And how does the five-dollar
bill story go?
Carl Brady: It was a one-dollar bill.
He tore it in half and gave me half,
and I signed it, and he took that half.
Then he signed the other half and

gave it to me. It was whatever we
wanted to do for one another in the
Senate or elsewhere, any time.
HAI: Did you ever try to cash it in?
Carl Brady: The one time I asked
him to do anything, I asked him to
support Wally Hickel for governor
when Wally was running against Jay
Hammond. Jay Hammond was the
incumbent. Senator Stevens told me
that the tradition of the U.S. Senate
was that you support the incumbent,
and you never vary from that. I
asked him what would happen if I
cashed in my chip. He said, "I'll have
to resign from the Senate." And he
meant it. He meant every word of it.
So I never tried that on him.
(Pauses.) But I thought about it.
HAI: Final question. In the early
years, when you were literally
building the company job by job,
there must have been tough times.
As a businessman, how did you face
them?
Carl Brady: Well, we didn't make
money every year, but most of the
time we made money. When we
didn't make money, it was a disaster
as far as I was concerned. Just a
disaster. I started preaching to my
employees about saving here and
saving there, to cut costs. But to
answer your question, what we did is,
we survived!
Now when we sold out to Rowan
Companies Inc. out of Houston,
Texas, we did it because we had to
expand. There was the discovery of
oil on the North Slope, and we had
many calls for helicopters that we
couldn't provide. We had to expand
in order to stay in business. It was
either that or go public, and we
decided to sell.
We had several offers. We had
one from Bill Lear. He came up here
and offered me two million for the
company. We were asking two and a
half. Lear said, "I'll give you two
million and then I'll sell the company
next year, and I'll give you the other
half million. Until then, that's the
best I can do."
I told him I couldn't take it
because it would have been robbing
my partners out of their share. I
couldn't do that. My partners from
Rotor Aids were two fine people —
Roy Falconer and Joe Seward.
Anyway, the Lear thing fell
through. We finally sold to Rowan
Company. We got one million down,
and notes for the rest of it. And they
paid just the way they were supposed
to.
After the dedication ceremony,
Senator Stevens took a moment to
speak with HAI about Brady's
contributions. "His work changed the
methods of surveying in Alaska,"
Stevens said. "We would never have
had the coast mapped if it hadn't
been for the application of the
methods he devised. He made the
wilderness accessible. Literally, he
took us from a millimeter to a mile.
We went places we couldn't have
gone otherwise."
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www.rotor.com
Winter 2003-2004
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