CALSTAR plans medical transport base at Watsonville Airport

July 26--WATSONVILLE -- CALSTAR Air Medical Services is working to open an air medical transport base at Watsonville Municipal Airport this fall.

"We want to be closer to Santa Cruz County residents," said John Bettencourt, regional director of service delivery at Reach Holdings, CALSTAR's parent company.

Santa Cruz County does not have a trauma center, so anyone seriously injured in a highway crash or suffering a gunshot wound are taken to facilities in Salinas or San Jose. If the transport is via helicopter, that ride can cost $30,000, according to the U.S. General Accountability Office.

CALSTAR air medical transports are a subscription service.

A member pays $85 a year; that covers out-of-pocket expenses for a medically-necessary flight by providers in the 320-base AirMedCare Network for anyone in the household. For senior households, the price is $65 a year.

Dr. Dave Ghilarducci, EMS medical director with the Santa Cruz County EMS Agency, welcomes CALSTAR.

"This is advantageous because it would shorten response times for air ambulances, provide increased availability, and on foggy days when an ambulance can't fly," he said, noting the current ambulance provider, AMR, determined Santa Cruz County has the traffic volume to support the new service.

Recruiting began last month for pilots, flight nurses, paramedics and an aircraft maintenance technician to staff the new Watsonville base.

CALSTAR's plans call for an Airbus EC 135 helicopter. That model can carry two crew and two patients and is capable of flight under instrument flight rules and with GPS for transports to and from Dominican Hospital in inclement weather.

CALSTAR has been servicing Santa Cruz County from its air medical transport base in Salinas, and Anna McNamara-Blair, the vice president of service delivery, is familiar with the area, having grown up in Santa Cruz and started her career as a volunteer firefighter in the San Lorenzo Valley.

Rayvon Williams, Watsonville Airport manager, said he reached out to CALSTAR in 2016 and began discussions but it wasn't until this year that CALSTAR decided to go ahead.

"I saw the consolidation in the industry," said Williams.

CALSTAR became a subsidiary in 2016 of REACH Air Medical, a privately held company and part of Air Medical Group Holdings, a company in the portfolio of global investment firm KKR since 2015.

AMR, which provides ambulance service in three dozen states including Santa Cruz County, has been owned by Air Medical Group Holdings since March.

PRICING

Prices for air ambulance services came under scrutiny by the GAO last year.

The agency found the median price charged for helicopter air ambulance service doubled from $15,000 in 2010 to $30,000 in 2014, and cited consolidation -- three large independent providers operating 73 percent of the industry's helicopters -- as a factor.

The GAO noted the U.S. Department of Transportation has authority to investigate potentially unfair practices in air transportation, but has not looked at helicopter air ambulances.

DOT officials said more information about the air ambulance industry was needed.

The GAO recommended the Secretary of Transportation inform people how to file complaints on air ambulance service, make complaint information publicly available, determine what data could help evaluate complaints in the future and consider air ambulance consumer disclosure requirements.

Balance billing occurs when the ambulance service bills privately-insured patient for the difference between the price charged and the insurance payment.

AIRPORT

Williams said the airport gets a lot of helicopter traffic and has a couple of locations on the airfields with water and electrical service that could be suitable.

"We're in discussions on how the logistics would work," he said. "It has to match the airport layout plan approved by the FAA."

He expects to negotiate a ground lease with CALSTAR to put up a facility and bring that agreement to the City Council in early fall.

Williams said the air medical transport base is part of a larger effort to bring new businesses to the airport, which has a flight school and is home base for Specialized Helicopter and Watsonville Diesel.

New on the scene are:

--Hoversurf, a privately held company founded by Alexander Atamov developing a hoverbike with quadcopter technology, which got a one-year lease for hangar and office space in April,

--The Hangar, a popup restaurant space under construction by Cianciarulo Construction and Aptos brothers Kevin and Brian Dueck, expected to open this fall.

--Beer Mule, from the folks at Beer Thirty, Olive Moredock, Craig Renfroe, Kym and Shawd DeWitt, which will be in the center of The Hangar.

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