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The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics' Air and Mobile Critical Service is an integrated delivery system focused on providing timely emergency and/or critical care in the field, in outlying hospitals as well as during air or ground transport. AirCare provides air and mobile critical services to the people of central and eastern Iowa as well as western Illinois.
The AirCare emergency helicopter service at UI Hospitals and Clinics was the first hospital-based emergency air medical program in Iowa, and one of the first programs in the nation making its first flight in 1979.
AirCare regularly collaborates with nearly 100 emergency medical services, fire, and law enforcement programs throughout Iowa and the region. It transports patients from more than 50 hospitals that serve hundreds of communities across the region. Even though AirCare can transport to other hospitals, its return destination is most often UI Hospitals and Clinics, a level I trauma center where specialists in a wide variety of discipline manage a wide variety of illnesses.
AirCare I, based at UI Hospitals and Clinics, flies with a crew of two registered nurses. AirCare II is based at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, Iowa, with one registered nurse and one paramedic. The Waterloo location provides rapid response to calls from north central and northeastern Iowa.
Faculty emergency medicine physicians and senior emergency medicine resident physicians regularly supplement the flight teams as medical providers. The physicians serve as bedside medical control as well as reinforce the working relationships with referring physicians and hospitals.
AirCare is the only flight program in the state affiliated with an emergency medicine residency program and is the only flight program in the state supplementing their medical crew with physicians.
AirCare rapidly transports critically ill and severely injured patients, delivering medical care en route with an emphasis on supporting high risk patient populations, including multi-system trauma, neonate, and other time-sensitive, complex medical conditions.
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