SIDE STREETS: Neighbors want hospital helicopter flight changes

For decades, residents of Boulder Park have shared their neighborhood with Memorial Hospital. They’ve learned to live with sirens day and night, lots of traffic and construction projects.

Like anywhere, there have been spats. Remember the hospital smoking policy that sent hundreds of staff, patients and visitors into the park to puff? Memorial changed its policy and the smokers mostly vanished.

Now there’s a new problem: the Memorial Star Transport helicopter.

Memorial has had a helipad for years, and routinely received patients delivered by ‘copter. That’s not the problem. Boulder Park accepted it as another a fact of life, said neighbor Chad Wright, who sits on a committee that discusses issues with Memorial.

The problem is noise from the number of flights, which has soared since 2005, when Memorial leased its own chopper. Hospitals have discovered helicopters are a valuable revenue center — a $2.5 billion industry, according to a recent report, fueled by lucrative Medicare and private insurance reimbursement rates. (See my blog for more on the dangerous increase in the use of medical helicopters.)

With its new bird, Memorial’s rooftop helipad, perched 90 feet above the neighborhood, got very busy. The number of flights jumped from one a day to an average of about eight daily.

Each time the chopper lands or leaves, surrounding houses vibrate and noise levels approach 80 decibels, far exceeding the 55 decibel max allowed for non-emergency events and vehicles.

Neighbors want changes.

Tonight marks another in a long series of meetings between Boulder Park residents, Memorial, city planning staff and the Olympic Training Center, which is the hospital’s next-door neighbor to the east.

Memorial’s John Foss, vice president of support services, brings news of progress: It has broken ground on a $475,000 refueling station. It is installing a 6,000-gallon storage tank, pipes and equipment to pump jet fuel up to the helipad. The system should begin operations in November and will eliminate about 25 percent of the daily flights made simply to refuel.

Wright said neighbors also would like a rooftop “roll-off pad” installed to eliminate the need for another 7 percent of daily flights. Currently, Memorial’s bird must fly off to make room for other hospitals’ choppers to land.

They also want a frank discussion of whether all flights are true life-or-death events or creating undue risk as the number of fatal medical helicopter crashes nationally soars.

Memorial is balking at spending upwards of $2 million on the roll-off. So it is considering relocating its helipad to a lower spot on the campus.

After years of meetings, neighbors are frustrated and want written promises.

“We want something tangible,” Wright said. “After all these years, it’s past time.”

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