5 November 2014

The regions’ emergency medical helicopters have been operational for five weeks. The painless start-up is attributed to successful trial schemes in Ringsted and Karup.

Since the night before 1 October 2014, the Danish regions have had three emergency medical helicopters at their disposal. The crews fly primarily in response to 112 calls about very ill or severely injured patients.

“The 24-hour service is up and running on a day-to-day basis, and we have the trial schemes that preceded us in Skive and Ringsted to thank for this being achieved without any major problems,” says Troels Martin Hansen, Medical Director of Danish Air Ambulance.

In the footsteps of the trials

“During the first month, we’ve taken off an average of six times a day. This is the same pattern seen with the trial schemes, which we’ve used as a basis for planning the new national service,” he says.

The trial schemes also showed that the emergency medical helicopters were primarily to fly between the peripheral areas of Denmark and hospitals providing highly specialised treatment.

This pattern is repeated in Danish Air Ambulance and thus also in the Region of Southern Denmark, which has not previously had the same degree of coverage as the rest of Denmark, but which is now covered, primarily by the emergency medical helicopter in Billund.

Coverage across regional boundaries

For obvious reasons, the trials could not provide much information about how often the three emergency medical helicopters ‘help’ each other.
“But it actually happens regularly that the emergency medical helicopters fly on missions in regions located far from their home bases,” says Troels Martin Hansen.

Capital Region of Denmark, Central Denmark Region, Region Zealand, North Denmark Region and Region of Southern Denmark jointly operate Denmark’s three yellow emergency medical helicopters. The helicopters and their crews are a supplement to ambulances and acute medical cars and emergency vehicles, among other emergency response units, and they are on duty 24 hours a day.

More information

  • Svend Hartling, Chairman of the Steering Committee for the Regions’ Emergency Medical Helicopters, tel. +45 4026 6887
  • The Secretariat for the Regions’ Emergency Medical Helicopters, tel. +45 7841 4848