Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society (STARS) has been picking up patients from the Swift Current Airport since October, and it doesn't look as though that'll change in the near future.

In an emergency situation when a patient has to be sent from the Cypress Regional Hospital in Swift Current to either Regina or Saskatoon, they are discharged from emergency, driven in an ambulance the approximately 10 kilometres it takes to get to the airport, and then picked up by a helicopter. (There is also another service sometimes used - Saskatoon-based Air Ambulance uses planes and lands at the airport on a permanent basis.)

Prior to July STARS would land at the helipad on the east side of the hospital, but development in the area meant STARS had to land at a temporary site on the west side to meet Transport Canada guidelines.

In October, Transport Canada looked at temporary landing pads in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and determined that because of recent infrastructure around Cypress Regional Hospital, the temporary helipad didn't meet requirements.

Liz Rackow, director of EMS in the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA)'s Swift Current office, said they hope to find a permanent solution right next to the hospital.

"I think that the biggest advantage is that the patient is receiving care in the emergency department, and the transport is really the minimal distance possible if we're able to proceed with the helipad," she said. "You have the complication of the patient being discharged from emergency at the hospital that is transported by ground ambulance out to the helicopter in the current process, so if we can minimize that and just have patients go directly from the hospital to the helicopter, that's better for patients."

The SHA has sent out a request for proposals too look at creating a permanent site beside the hospital, but Rackow said the process is "under evaluation" and that there isn't "any sort of timeline."

Rackow's estimation of the time to move a patient from the hospital to the runway is around 10 to 15 minutes.

Depending on which helicopter STARS was sending to Swift Current, there were times when there was a helipad being used when it had to stop at the airport anyway, to fuel up before picking up the patient.