A Mom’s $97,000 Question: How Was Her Baby’s Air-Ambulance Ride Not Medically Necessary?

by | Mar 25, 2024 | Health

Sara England was putting together Ghostbusters costumes for Halloween when she noticed her baby wasn’t doing well.

Her 3-month-old son, Amari Vaca, had undergone open-heart surgery two months before, so she called his cardiologist, who recommended getting him checked out. England assigned Amari’s grandparents to trick-or-treat duty with his three older siblings and headed to the local emergency room.

Once England and the baby arrived at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California, she said, doctors could see Amari was struggling to breathe and told her that he needed specialized care immediately, from whichever of two major hospitals in the region had an opening first.

Even as they talked, Amari was declining rapidly, his mother said. Doctors put a tube down his throat and used a bag to manually push air into his lungs for over an hour to keep his oxygen levels up until he was stable enough to switch to a ventilator.

According to England, late that night, when doctors said the baby was stable enough to travel, his medical team told her that a bed had opened up at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center and that staffers there were ready to receive him.

She, her son, and an EMT boarded a small plane around midnight. Ground ambula …

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Sara England was putting together Ghostbusters costumes for Halloween when she noticed her baby wasn’t doing well.

Her 3-month-old son, Amari Vaca, had undergone open-heart surgery two months before, so she called his cardiologist, who recommended getting him checked out. England assigned Amari’s grandparents to trick-or-treat duty with his three older siblings and headed to the local emergency room.

Once England and the baby arrived at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California, she said, doctors could see Amari was struggling to breathe and told her that he needed specialized care immediately, from whichever of two major hospitals in the region had an opening first.

Even as they talked, Amari was declining rapidly, his mother said. Doctors put a tube down his throat and used a bag to manually push air into his lungs for over an hour to keep his oxygen levels up until he was stable enough to switch to a ventilator.

According to England, late that night, when doctors said the baby was stable enough to travel, his medical team told her that a bed had opened up at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center and that staffers there were ready to receive him.

She, her son, and an EMT boarded a small plane around midnight. Ground ambula …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]

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