Photo courtesy of HALO Air Ambulance / Twitter

By Scott Roblin

HALO on 'Life Support'

HALO Air Ambulance close to ceasing operations without funding

May 14, 2020 | 10:55 AM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – The future of HALO Air Ambulance is hanging in the balance if they don’t receive immediate government assistance according to the organization.

In a press release posted Thursday, HALO say they are weeks away from having to scale down operations due to funding drying up during this pandemic.

“Things are as bad as they can be,” said HALO CEO Paul Carolan. “We feel like we have no choice but to let the public know and to let our stakeholders know that this is the situation that we’re in. There really is no way forward if we can’t get the government to sit on the other side of the table.”

According to HALO, an emergency board meeting was held late last week to discuss the immediate challenges the program is facing.

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Despite 2019 being a ‘record setting year’ for fund development for HALO, the pandemic has had an ‘immediate impact’ on their ability to fundraise.

HALO will reportedly be forced to scale back operations to their single-engine helicopter on June 1 without investment from the Government of Alberta and will only be able to provide limited medevac service for 30 days.

“It’s a significant scale back,” said Carolan. “While it certainly punched well above its weight class for the first 13 years, it can’t go to Calgary with an emergent patient, it doesn’t fly well in high winds, and doesn’t do well in high temperatures. So, it’s about an 80 percent reduction in capacity.”

A move to only the single-engine helicopter would mean HALO would also be down one advanced care paramedic from two per flight.

All medevac services offered by HALO meanwhile will also reportedly cease on July 1 if there is no change to the funding model.

“The long-term impact is HALO goes away completely,” said Carolan. “We would lose the ability to reach the Cypress Hills in 20 minutes or less, we lose the ability to get to Vauxhall inside 30 minutes, and be able to cover this entire part of the province in a very efficient and effective manner.”

HALO has reached out to the province to fund their complete budget over a six-month period, totalling $3 million to remain flying this summer.

“We’ve told the province we need $250,000 a month in a sustained format to continue to operate,” said Carolan. “We’ve built some flexibility into this announcement in that if we get six months of full funding, we know people are going to rally around this cause and we will extend the program with the sole goal of getting the government to the table once and for all.”

Since forming in 2007, HALO has not been able to access provincial funding and have been fully funded through community donations.

Carolan said they’ve been asking the province for assistance for well over a decade and need support now more than ever.

“This conversation was probably inevitable regardless,” he said. “COVID-19 might be the catalyst for this announcement, but it’s not the cause. We’ve been asking for a long time for the government to come to the table and it is really time that they step up.”