Emergency medical services
Emergency medical and mission-critical aerial services
Delivering solutions for Ambulance Victoria
Babcock delivers and maintains the vital crews and equipment to maintain Ambulance Victoria’s reputation for world-class emergency aeromedical response, patient care and recovery from remote and difficult environments.
Ambulance Victoria (AV) aims to improve the health of the community by providing high quality pre-hospital care and medical transport. They provide emergency medical response to more than 5.5 million people in the Australian state of Victoria, which has a physical area of more than 227,000 square kilometers.
The organisation has a dedicated Air Ambulance division, which has a fleet of five rotary and four fixed wing aircraft supporting the community. Air Ambulance Victoria (AAV) is part of the Specialist Services Division within AV and provides a state-wide aero-medical response and flight coordination service.
With a fleet of high performance fixed wing aircraft and emergency helicopters, commonly referred to as HEMS (Helicopter Emergency Medical Service), AAV retrieve and treat around 6,000 patients a year. All of the AAV fleet are dedicated to the retrieval of critically ill patients throughout metropolitan and regional Victoria. They provide a service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Agusta Westland AW-139
Air Ambulance Victoria operates its emergency response helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft from four base locations in Victoria – Essendon, LaTrobe Valley, Bendigo and Warrnambool. This ensures effective state coverage and for rural communities to have rapid access to our highest level of care and transport to major specialist care in the Melbourne metropolitan region. Most helicopter work is pre-hospital time critical emergencies, which are often trauma and paediatric cases, with the balance mainly inter-hospital transfers (with a small amount of search and rescue, and transporting remote patients).
Air Ambulance Victoria helicopters are operated by a crew of three, consisting of a pilot, an air crewman and a MICA Flight Paramedic. Babcock’s crew play a vital role in supporting the paramedics in their life-saving operations and are an instrumental part of the service to the community. MICA Flight Paramedics are highly educated and experienced Intensive Care Paramedics who have advanced clinical knowledge, skills and a high level of physical fitness to ensure they are capable of undertaking this demanding role. Babcock ensures that its pilots and crewmen maintain similar levels of skill and fitness to be able to assist the paramedics. The crew have a one-team approach to supporting each other and rely on the highest level of trust and crew resource management to deliver a safe and effective service.
Babcock flies 10,000 hours per year across its fleet of 20 twin and single-engine turbine helicopters, from nine locations in South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
Since 2016, Babcock has supplied new state-of-the-art Agusta Westland AW-139 twin engine helicopters, including a dedicated back-up aircraft to support the AAV operations. All helicopters are equipped with a rescue winch allowing the MICA flight Paramedic to be lowered into very remote places to rescue patients including bushland, boats and the ocean.
The new fleet provides a centralised model for all aircraft, standard fit-out and equipment to assist in streamlining training and operational processes for MICA flight paramedics, flight paramedics and crews.
Babcock’s core business is contracted immediate-response mission-critical helicopter services, operating 24 hours a day, every day of the year. This includes helicopter emergency medical services, search and rescue, surveillance, law enforcement, aerial work and fire-fighting support.
Babcock flies 10,000 hours per year across its fleet of 20 twin and single-engine turbine helicopters, from nine locations in South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
Our long-term partnership with Ambulance Victoria and experience with HEMS has delivered considerable benefit to the community. Our expertise, commitment and focus on safe practices in the most challenging of circumstances has helped save countless lives.
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