The helipad at Alicante General Hospital records over 80 operations in the first months of activity

After nine months of operation, the helipad at Doctor Balmis General University Hospital has recorded a total of 83 operations, averaging eight operations per month, with March being the busiest month, with 16 activations of the helipad. In the last month of September, there were 12 operations carried out.

The most frequent time for operations has been 11:00 am in fourteen of them. However, it is noteworthy that the helipad is categorized as an "H24", meaning it is prepared for aircraft landings 24 hours a day, if necessary.

The infrastructure, which involved an investment of 240,000 euros, is intended for the take-off and landing of helicopters for medical use, enabling the urgent transfer of the most seriously ill patients directly to the provincial reference hospital center.

"The helipad has allowed us to shorten distances and reduce response times in emergencies. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the estimated arrival time of the helicopter at the hospital from the time the alert is issued has been less than 15 minutes in more than half of the cases, which speeds up the time of assistance, diagnosis, and treatment of patients who need an urgent transfer in a medicalized helicopter," emphasized the manager of the Alicante General Hospital Health Department, Francisco Soriano.

The Alicante hospital points out that before having this new resource, response times were longer, as medical helicopters landed at the facilities of the Provincial Fire Consortium, in the municipality of San Vicente del Raspeig, or at the Mutxamel aerodrome, and then traveled by road to the health center.

"This represents a leap in the care of critical patients arriving by helicopter, reducing attention times and gaining in safety," remarked the director of the Valencian Community Health Emergency Service (SESCV), Rafael Romero.

As part of the Helipad Self-Protection Plan, which aims to introduce improvements in safety, efficiency, and coordination in risk prevention and control, a drill was recently conducted, jointly coordinated by the SESCV and Doctor Balmis Hospital.

The drill recreated an emergency situation that included the collection of a patient at the hospital who needed to be transferred to La Fe Hospital in Valencia due to being severely burned, and subsequently, an incident at the helipad with the presence of fire due to a fuel spill, once the helicopter had taken off and left.

The helipad at Doctor Balmis Hospital has a total area of 2,100 square meters and is located on the rooftop of the hospital's parking lot. It is an infrastructure where helicopters arrive with critical patients who need care in a tertiary and highly specialized center like Doctor Balmis Hospital.

According to the communication service of the Alicante hospital, the SESCV's medical helicopters offer better care to people with time-dependent pathologies that require early treatment, as they reduce transfer time. Likewise, there are pathologies that benefit from air transport because it offers stability during the journey that is not achieved with land transport.