Partly cloudy. Low 71F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..
Partly cloudy. Low 71F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
The ShandsCair helicopter lands at UF Health The Villages Hospital.
The ShandsCair helicopter lands at UF Health The Villages Hospital.
Around the clock rapid transport for the critically injured and ill is now here.
UF Health leaders announced Thursday that ShandsCair 2, a critical care helicopter, is now positioned at UF Health The Villages Hospital.
It’s the first time in The Villages’ history that a critical care helicopter will call the community home and it is the latest development for the only community hospital in the region linked to a university hospital.
The ShandsCair helicopter will lift off from the hospital to transport critically ill patients from across the region to UF Health Shands Gainesville — offering the highest level of care following a mere 25-minute flight on average to cover a distance of more than 60 miles. The helicopter also can transport critical injury patients from the injury site to the nearest trauma center.
“It’s really about caring for patients in their most vulnerable moment,” Heather Long, UF Health Central Florida’s chief operating officer, told a crowd of dignitaries and health care officials gathered Thursday. “It’s about caring for the patients having the tools and resources when seconds and minutes matter.”
The ShandsCair flight crew, composed of a flight care nurse, flight care paramedic and pilot, can serve a 75-mile radius in and around The Villages. The crews will work 24-hour shifts, always at the ready, from UF Health The Villages Hospital, a 307-bed inpatient facility.
“It starts in the field, at somebody’s home or the grocery store. It quickly evolves to an emergency department here that does spectacular things, the emergency department in Leesburg that does spectacular things and certainly Brownwood as well,” UF Health Shands CEO Ed Jimenez said. “And then there is conversation that happens, when it’s necessary, with the Gainesville campus and there you go.”
JImenez said the helicopter was one of the first ways UF interacted with The Villages, but acknowledges it “probably didn’t come around much” before a commitment was born among community partners to increase the connection.
“Now, it’s an every day thing, because what we decided to do many years ago was to find a connection between a university hospital and a community hospital that could get together and contemplate care in a different way,” he said. “And do better for our community. Quite honestly, that’s what separates us.”
Long was a nurse when The Villages hospital first opened in July 2002. She cared for the first patient to come through the emergency department doors, a 9-yearold Fruitland Park boy with a broken arm.
She said she remembers the patients they couldn’t get to the tertiary or high-level care in Gainesville back then and is motivated by the fact that can now be a distant memory.
UF Health, with its signature orange and blue colors, acquired the hospital in December 2019, creating many new health care advancements for the community in that time.
“This is an exciting day for us. We have lots of orange and blue around us. And when I look at the orange and blue, I think about what that represents. It’s really about our continued and dedicated integration of UF Health Central Florida and UF Health Shands, our mother ship, flagship hospital in Gainesville,” Long said. “It really elevates us and positions us for the care of the future.”
The helicopter provides the rapid link to UF Health Shands, rated the top hospital in Florida and home to top-rated medical specialties nationally each year.
“We go anywhere and everywhere we need to go. That is our passion, that is what we love to do” said Todd Brooks, ShandsCair’s chief flight nurse.”Our goal is to respond in 10 minutes, get the helicopter off the ground in 10 minutes, we keep close track of that. In about five minutes we’re at the aircraft and the other five minutes is our pilot starting the aircraft.”
Brooks said a helicopter flight traditionally trims about two-thirds the time of transporting someone by ground ambulance from the same distance.
But he and the rest of the flight crew personnel do more than just provide rapid transport to Gainesville or the nearest trauma center.
Nurses and paramedics are accustomed to treating critical patients. In-flight, they can start an IV line providing the body critical fluids, intubate patients to breath for them or insert a line to provide oxygen-rich blood back into the body for those in severe distress, insert a tube to remove air or fluid buildup around a patient’s lungs, and other procedures. Stroke care, and the urgency of getting patients to a designated stroke center, such as UF Health Shands, is a common reason to want to fly a patient, so crews can monitor intracranial pressure from conditions such as a stroke, aneurysm or head trauma.
“Other programs will only go back to their hospital, we’ll go wherever is most appropriate,” Brooks said of medical destinations, although trauma patients must go to the nearest available trauma center.
Trauma centers, such as UF Shands, have dedicated teams well trained and well versed to handle the critically injured, as well reserved treatment and operating rooms and radiology equipment for their use only.
The Villages is served primarily by multiple critical care helicopter transport programs, including Air Care 2 based in Leesburg and AirLife 4 stationed in Inverness, but ShandsCaire 2 is the first helicopter service in The Villages, although a previous service was once located along Powell Road before The Villages developed in that area. The three entities can work together, such as all flying to a traffic crash with multiple victims along U.S. Highway 301 and Warm Springs Avenue earlier this year. At the time, ShandsCaire 2 lifted off from a base in southern Marion County, south of Belleview.
Moving ShandsCair to the hospital is just the latest in a succession of improvements and enhancements that UF Health as brought to The Villages in two years. For walk-in emergency department care, the hospital is working on a fast-track program to alleviate ER wait times, get patients treated and back home faster.
“We focused really hard on what do our residents need, how can we get together to do it differently and I’d like to believe, and I think it’s true, that people that come to our emergency room today believe it’s different than it was three years ago, different than it was five years ago,” Jimenez said.
University of Florida made early inroads with residents by launching the first large-scale COVID-19 testing site at The Villages Polo Field at the onset of pandemic. They committed to research facilities here, geared for making medical science strides for seniors for the nation’s oldest median population. They’re planning increased services in the area of orthopedics and cardiology here.
Jimenez said there are other strides made that the public doesn’t necessary see that ties The Villages to Gainesville.
“We developed connections between the campuses very early on and that allowed us to function effectively,” he said. “I would say in these last two years, we’ve learned a lot about each other.”
And the biggest news came two years ago, when UF Health and The Villages announced plans to construct a 400-bed research hospital. It will be in Lake County just north of County Road 470. The future hospital will anchor a $100 million-plus development on 400-plus acres and is expected to create hundreds of high-wage jobs in science, medicine and research.
It will be supported by a residency program with physicians trained in latest innovations in health care. The program is expected to attract top medical talent and studies reflect more than half of those residents often continue their practice in the place of their residency, meaning The Villages can retain those physicians.
“Everyday we’re becoming more proud of what we’re doing,” Jimenez said.
Curt Hills is managing editor with the Daily Sun. He can be reached at (352) 753-1119, ext. 5287 or curt.hills@thevillagesmedia.com.
Partly cloudy. Low 71F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Partly cloudy. Low 71F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 87F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
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