simulators at the annual Air Medical
TransportConference. STARS has finished
third or better in each year it’s participated
in the event.
“We are very, very proud of what do here,”
CEO/President Andrea Robertson said.
“We also see it as a huge responsibility and a
privilege to be involved with individuals on
what’s probably the toughest day of their
lives.”
It was one of those difficult days – when a
young mother died in an over-the-ground
ambulance en route to a Calgary hospital –
that inspired STARS founder Dr. Gregory
Powell to turn the knowledge that he’d
gained into the service that patients in
Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba rely
on today.
“She had a difficult birth, not a terribly
abnormal birth – after all, the baby was
born normal and healthy – but she bled to
death in the ambulance on the way into
Calgary,” he said.“It was just speed. They ran
out of blood. They ran out of fluids. They
were coming from a small, little hospital.
And it just sort of struck you that this was a
completely unnecessary situation, and we
cando something about this.”
Within weeks, Powell assembled a group of
emergency doctors who leased a helicopter
and staffed it with a volunteermedical crew.
He said they coupled the obvious adventure
element with a growing realization that the
concept could have a significant impact on
pre-hospital patient care.
“It worked pretty well,” he said, “but we
didn’t have any money and resistance to
f u n d i n g b y g o v e r n m e n t w a s
understandable. They were trying to, even
back then, stretch budgets to cover growing
medicals costs which were not in their
sights. Sowe had a pretty difficult time with
funding and decided maybe we ought to
raise somemoney.”
As it turns out, many donors have answered
the call.
The Mosaic Company, a Saskatchewan-
based producer of phosphates and potash
for the agricultural industry, donated $5.5
million to help fund the 2012 purchase of a
BK117 helicopter and construction of a
hangar fromwhich STARS nowoperates in
62 | BusinessWorld |
May 2014
