UCLA to Ground MedStar Service
UCLA Medical Center will ground its MedStar Emergency Air Transport Service after eight years of operation because of a lack of money to fund the 24-hour “flying emergency room,” the program’s director said Wednesday.
Dr. Marshall Morgan, who started MedStar in 1983, informed 22 staff members at a meeting that efforts to restructure the service to recover most of its estimated $3 million annual cost had failed.
The program will be closed down by Oct. 1, he said.
Morgan said later that he is depressed by prospects of the loss of a unique program that combines helicopter, fixed-wing and ground ambulance transportation with treatment by doctors and nurses as critically-ill patients are rushed to the hospital. But, he said, he was unable to be angry about the administrative decision.
“Times are tough for hospitals in general,” he said in a telephone interview.
“It’s an expensive service. . . . We operate a helicopter, and we operate a jet aircraft, and we have a very highly qualified staff and emergency flight physicians, to provide care.”
Until the present budget crunch, he said, UCLA Medical Center “has been pleased” to subsidize MedStar’s operation.
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