We have fairly decent response times, often not exceeding 7-8 minutes. It usually takes us a bit longer to respond to MVAs, as many MVAs are not in the "city." We do have a QRU that assists us with calls to the south and to the east of our base, and their response time is often 3 minutes or less.
Although we often have crews sleeping at the facility, there are times when responders must reach the station from their own places first, increasing times. So far, our outliers have been:
~45 seconds for a call two houses from station
~45 minutes for a logging accident, in a snowstorm, with 29 miles to travel on a dirt road. Air medical assisted.
Although we have a main population center that lives within about 4 miles of station, we do have other "villages" that are considerably further away. Overall, we cover just over 600 square miles. Our nearest hospital is < 1 mile from the station (Trauma Receiving center only.), but our nearest level 2 center is 80 miles. A new doctor once told me that we were on "trauma diversion" because he "didn't feel comfortable" with so many MVAs.
That silly man didn't realize that we couldn't really do that where we were.
Recently, we put in a longer, wider runway (w/ VASI) to facilitate fixed wings. For transports that are not critical, we run a two-man transport. For more emergent transports, we are usually given an RN to accompany. We also often have helicopters meet us at the hospital or on scene. (Logging accident, MVA, etc.), and we'll occasionally meet the helicopter at some halfway point, especially if the weather is bad. There have been times where air medical couldn't make it all the way because of weather, so a CRNA and MD came along until the rendezvous. We generally flight out 1 of every 12 calls. MVAs generally flight 1 of every 4 calls.
With all that said, the people that live way out here in Montana generally do so because they don't want to be around many people. From what I know, most are just happy with the arrangement. If they get hurt way out in the woods, SAR will deal with them, and our SAR has a lot of very experienced people. (Dive teams, ropes, medical, etc.) SAR also tends to use a certain medical helicopter from up north, as they are more comfortable with some of the flying required.
I have heard a few people grumble about a long response time here or there. It's unfortunate, but we get wrong directions sometimes, and we also have people that end up stuck in a vehicle for a lot longer than we'd like because no one saw them. With the area that we cover, I think we do quite well.
Ok, enough of my long-winded reply.
