Metro Aviation and UW Health’s Med Flight partnership officially took flight on May 31. Med Flight has begun serving its 250-mile-radius service area with a new fleet of three Airbus EC135s and an EC145, completed by Metro Aviation.

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“Metro Aviation has a nationwide reputation for supporting hospital-based air medical helicopter operations like Med Flight,” said Frank Erdman, critical care transport manager for Med Flight. “Metro has responded to UW Health Med Flight’s goals for improved safety and quality patient care by offering the expertise and support that will assure that these goals are achieved. We look forward to this new partnership.”

Over the next two years, Med Flight will replace the three single-pilot instrument flight rules (IFR) EC135s and one legacy single-pilot EC145, all provided by Metro, with four brand-new, single-pilot IFR EC145es.

“The capabilities of the UW Health Med Flight program will be significantly enhanced with the addition of the state-of-the-art EC145 C2es by allowing us to take full advantage of its range, payload and IFR avionics,” said Dr. Ryan Wubben, medical director for Med Flight. “On the medical side, the larger cabin and extra payload will allow us to create specialized teams for individual patients by providing perfusionists, cardiovascular surgeons and NICU and PICU providers and emergency medicine residents.”

These new helicopters will provide longer range and higher payload for the UW Health Med Flight team, enabling them to provide care to a larger geographic area.

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“Our training mission as an academic medical center will also be significantly improved by the enhanced ability to carry additional crew members in training, such as the residents in our Emergency Medicine training program,” said Wubben. “UW Health has invested heavily in a low altitude IFR route structure with precision WAAS/LPV capable instrument approaches to critical assess hospitals in our region that are vitally dependent on UW Med Flight to safely transport their patients to quaternary care centers. The full IFR capability of that system will be fully utilized with the WAAS/LPV capable IFR EC135s initially, and then in turn the new EC145 C2es.”

The collaboration will be felt throughout southwest and south-central Wisconsin; Med Flight is expanding its reach in 2019, adding a base in Portage to its existing bases in Mineral Point and Madison.

All the aircraft will receive Metro’s standard EMS configuration and premium paint package along with mission-specific equipment. Each completion will be performed at Metro’s Shreveport-based completion center.