BREAKING NEWS: FAA intends to publish new medical flight regulation

Hi folks, it’s Scott Wallask. At a Congressional subcommittee hearing today, an official from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) testified before lawmakers that the agency will begin drafting a new rulemaking for hospital EMS flights.

The FAA hopes to have a draft of the rulemaking available for comment by late 2009 or early 2010, John Allen, the director of flight standards for the FAA, told the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Aviation today.

The FAA’s move comes in the wake of a spike in medical helicopter crashes. Nine fatal medical flight accidents have occurred since December 2007, killing 35 people, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).  The NTSB has been pushing the FAA to enforce more aggressive medical flight regulations.

The FAA rulemaking will include many of the voluntary medical flight initiatives published by the FAA over the past few years, including the 2004 heliport design Advisory Circular 150/5390-2.

Les Dorr, an FAA spokesperson, told me today that the agency had always intended to pursue a formal rulemaking, but had encouraged the medical flight industry to voluntarily takes precautionary steps while the rulemaking machine revved up.

Meanwhile, on Monday the Flight Safety Foundation — a nonprofit group that aims to improve aviation safety– released a 64-page report outlining 26 major risks in the structure and oversight of the medical flight industry. The document also highlights possible steps to offset these risks, with the caveat that it is up to various parties involved in medical flight services to help make changes.

Representatives from The Joint Commission helped review a draft of the Flight Safety Foundation report earlier this year, and in doing so fleshed out patient safety and risk management practices within the document.

“Acknowledging the problem and identifying risks are critical first steps toward finding solutions to accidents that have plagued helicopter emergency medical services,” Jerod Loeb, PhD, executive vice president of the Division of Quality Measurement and Research at The Joint Commission, said in a press release issued by the Flight Safety Foundation.

Look for further coverage in an upcoming issue of Briefings on Hospital Safety.