Helipad improvements planned in Bagley

BAGLEY, Minn. – The Minnesota Department of Health has awarded Sanford Medical Center Bagley and Clearwater County with a $125,000 grant to fund helipad improvements, which will allow the hospital to more quickly transport critical patients to tertiary hospitals. The hospital has been without a functional helipad on site since summer 2014, when it learned its existing helipad lacked sufficient clearance to meet licensure requirements.

Clearwater County is providing the requisite 25 percent match, as the property and buildings are owned by the county and leased by Sanford Health. The finished product will likewise be owned by Clearwater County.

The helipad project will not impact the landing pad itself but addresses a number of issues that were identified in the Department of Transportation site survey. These items include the removal of a nearby ambulance garage and two trees, in addition to lighting improvements. A three-vehicle ambulance garage will be rebuilt on the other side of the hospital.

"The helipad is more than the physical place where the helicopter lands; it’s the whole site: your approach and egress, what’s over the flight path as you’re coming in, what’s over the flight path as you’re going out," explained Seth Tramm, director of wound care, hyperbarics and emergency medical services for Sanford Health of Northern Minnesota.

Helipad requirements are based on the physical elements of a "design helicopter" – the largest helicopter that could fly into a helipad – and that helicopter keeps getting larger, said Tramm. As the design helicopter’s size increased, the hospital’s helipad was deemed too small.

Since summer 2014, patients requiring emergency transport were taken by ambulance from the Bagley hospital to the Bagley airport to be flown by helicopter to another hospital.

"Emergency transport is crucial for the patients in need of that level of care," Tramm said. "When we could not land at the hospital, the next-best thing was to land at the airport. However, if there’s something we can do about it to make this happen here, that’s what we want to do because we understand that minutes make a difference in these scenarios."