San Juan Regional Medical Center Receives New AirCare Plane

[San Juan Regional Medical Center, recently introduced its new air care emergency airplane with a blue ribbon cutting at Four Corners regional airport. Emergency medical flights deliver life-saving care day in and day out. And San Juan regional medical center considers it a blessing to provide such a tremendous wide-reaching service in the Four Corners area. You're watching the local news network, brought to you by Farmington ServiceMaster Restore and Farmington Ace hardware. I'm Wendy Graham Settle. The shiny new aircraft, a Pilatus PC-12 NGX replaces a 1997 Pilatus, with state-of-the-art technological advancements.

There's not a gauge- You think of airplanes, right? You think of gauges, right? And altimeters and all. So it's all digital now. All run by computer.

With a budget of $5.7 million. Berve had the opportunity to include new safety features such as a better patient loading system, a wider, longer stretcher and anti-microbial surfaces.

State-of-the-art. And then if you turn around and look your other way, I'll show you what is different here.

Okay

So obviously we can take two patients. We don't all the time but you can see there's two positions. And what's different is everything is built for the purpose, purpose-built. So we didn't like modify an old plane. We started from scratch.

Once the Federal Aviation Administration approves its certification, the new Pilatus PC 12 will provide about 75 emergency medical flights every month.

We've got a new air ambulance that will come to play here in our region, which for an area that is rural, like we are, this is definitely a amazing asset to have for community health care.

Emergency airplane services at San Juan Regional Medical Center began in 1986 with one airplane and one person working on call. Today, San Juan regional air care service is a busy, around the clock operation, employing more than 30 staff members.

It's great to see that the community gets the very latest in technology. Five years ago, they bought the best helicopter that you could buy for near ambulance. And now they bought one of the best airplanes that you can use for a longer distance area. So it's very good to see that our community has top of the line equipment.

San Juan Regional Medical Center is a nonprofit acute care hospital in level three trauma center with 198 beds. More information is available @sanjuanregional.com. Thanks for watching this edition of the local news network. I'm Wendy Graham Settle.

‍