CoxHealth Air Care: How a helicopter program has brought 33 years of service to the Ozarks

On Jan. 3, 1989, it was announced that CoxHealth would soon be receiving an emergency helicopter. In 2022, that helicopter service, Cox Air Care, celebrates 33 years of service.

The Air Care program has been a valuable part of providing quality care to our patients around the Ozarks. Our Air Care teams offer advanced critical care while getting patients to the hospital as quickly as possible. With time-critical diagnoses like strokes and heart attacks, that speed can make all the difference.

Susan Crum, Cox Air Care program director, says new technology has improved the already high quality care the team delivers. Crum has been with the program since the beginning as a flight nurse then has moved up to program director over the years.

“Protocols that exist in the hospital, we’re allowed to do on flight,” she says. Those protocols include services like ventilation, IV infusion pumps, chest tubes and pediatric patient care.

The Air Care program consists of two MD 902 Explorer helicopters stationed at Cox South and Citizens Memorial Healthcare in Bolivar. Air Care crews transport patients from scenes of trauma throughout southwest Missouri and parts of northwest Arkansas or provide hospital-to-hospital transport as far north as St. Louis.

On a given shift, each helicopter has a team consisting of a pilot, flight nurse, and paramedic. Flight Paramedic Joshua Collom and Flight Nurse Fehron Bivens detail what it’s like to provide critical medical services while in the air.

“We spend about an hour at the start of the day checking equipment, making sure we have everything we need for any potential situation. For an individual flight request, we receive the dispatch, gather equipment and load then do a safety inspection around the aircraft making sure nothing is out of place,” says Collom.

Bivens and Collom both have years of experience prior to joining the Air Care team that, they say, has really helped them understand their role in the field.

“We work together but it’s almost like a divide and conquer situation too. We both have the same scope of practice out there. I can get a report from the paramedic in the ambulance while he asses the patient or vice versa,” says Bivens.

The crew quickly formulates a plan on scene for the best care of the patient whether that be intubation or a fast ride to the hospital.

Both Bivens and Collom are proud to be part of Cox Air Care and are happy to provide this service to the Ozarks.

“The intent is to provide a high quality of patient care in a safe environment by a qualified flight team,” says Crum.