Texas Children’s Hospital puts an ICU in the sky with new helicopter program

A new helicopter will take to the skies over Central Texas on Tuesday. Texas Children’s Hospital has added a helicopter to its Kangaroo Crew intensive care transport team, which previously used only ambulances to bring patients to its Austin facility. 

The team will be able to travel 120 nautical miles to pick up a patient. The hospital, which opened almost two years ago, has launched programs that are attracting patients from across Texas and around the country, said Dr. Jeff Shilt, the president of Texas Children’s in Austin. “Having a helicopter for a pediatric hospital is really a differentiator for us.” 

The $15 million investment makes Texas Children’s the only hospital — pediatric or adult — in Austin with a dedicated helicopter. The other hospitals use STAR Flight.

The air transport program will expand this summer with a larger helicopter that will seat four in the bay instead of three and fly up to 200 nautical miles. That will take this helicopter beyond Waco, Brownwood, San Antonio and College Station, where this current helicopter can go, to near Dallas, San Angelo, Corpus Christi and Beaumont. Texas Children’s also has a plane that is based in Houston that can carry patients who are much further than 200 nautical miles. 

The helicopter also will be used locally when traffic on MoPac Boulevard or Interstate 35 would make an ambulance trip longer than 30 minutes to an hour.

The helicopter’s crew of four pilots, critical care nurses and respiratory therapists is based at the Georgetown Executive Airport, which is seven minutes of flying time to the hospital in North Austin. 

Each time the helicopter takes off, a respiratory therapist and a registered nurse travels with it. The medical team has been trained in trauma care and has multiple certifications. They also can bring a patient-specific specialized doctor or nurse practitioner if needed. There is a seat for a guardian to ride with their child. 

Inside the helicopter is a miniature intensive care unit with ventilators, monitors and oxygen tanks that can be moved in and out to stabilize a patient in a hospital, during the flight and after landing at the Texas Children’s helipad until the patient is connected to hospital machines.

“We take the ICU to them, stabilizing them and bring them back to a higher level of care,” said Kelley Young, a respiratory therapist with 19 years of critical care team experience working in a helicopter.

The patients are strapped into a sled that is tied down to the helicopter. That sled can be put onto a gurney to take the patient in and out of the helicopter. For smaller patients, such as babies, there are parts that are added to secure them to the sled.

The team is prepared for an emergency, including each having a survival kit on them and an additional one in the helicopter.

“We do a lot of training and a lot of simulations,” said John Samluk, a critical care nurse with the team.

They also can talk to everyone in the helicopter using headsets and call to hospital staff at either end of the journey to relay or receive updates.