We recently had the privilege of attending a national Helicopter Emergency Medical Service forum hosted by chief executives of various ambulance service NHS trusts in Harrogate. We listened with interest as several guest speakers extolled the virtues of their “entirely free” resource in helping to improve ORCON standards. This had been achieved through the “freeing-up” of road ambulances by performing non-time-critical transfers via helicopters and by expediting the transfer of seriously injured patients to local hospitals from incident scenes.

During discussion with speakers and other members of the audience we felt somewhat concerned that the general consensus of this group appeared to be that once a paramedic aircrew had rendered treatment and lifted …