Western Pennsylvania HEMS is the name of the project. The goal? To provide a group of hospitals around the Pittsburgh area, for free, to the X-Plane rotorhead community.
According to the author, Shea R. Patterson, this area offers “the perfect integrated system for users”.
The description of the system gives us a very clear picture of what to expect and I will use Shea’s words directly:
Pittsburgh has three Level 1 trauma centers, and several Level 2 trauma Centers. UPMC Presbyterian, UPMC Mercy, and Allegheny General Hospital are all nationally recognized as top hospitals.
UPMC Presbyterian is the Flagship Hospital of UPMC. Pittsburgh is also home to UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, simply known as children's locally, which is a very advanced pediatric level 1 trauma center.
Children's has a brand new 1.5 million sq feet hospital, and is known to be one of the best hospitals for children, period. Its ranked in the top ten of all children's hospital for almost all areas of medicine. Most hospitals in western pa are directly owned by UPMC or Allegheny Health Network, with routine transfer of patients from rural hospitals to larger hospitals in Pittsburgh.
And this, Shea continues, “sets the stage for the HEMS scenery I am developing”.
As an avid helicopter user for many years, Shea has decided to start developing this pack as he felt that it was an area in which there’s a gap and there’s not a lot out there for us, helicopter fans. Although we can find scenery available for our way of flying there is not a “complete solution featuring many highly detailed and accurately modeled hospitals simulating real world operations”.
As of right now, 6 hospitals have been released (you can find the full list at the end of this article) and, on each package, Shea is adding fully detailed instructions on how to set everything up, information about the HEMS operator, AirNav Data, VFR Sectional, a worksheet to simulate an HEMS operation, and how to properly install and organize the custom scenery folder for optimal results.
Not all hospitals are done yet and the final list is quite big. I was impressed with the size of it and since Shea sent it over, I though it would be nice to let you all take a glimpse of what’s planned:
- Clarion Hospital
- UPMC Northwest
- Warren General Hospital
- Brookville General Hospital
- Penn Highland Healthcare Dubois
- Sharon Regional Health System Heliport
- UPMC Altoona
- UPMC Kane
- Elk Regional Medical Center
- UPMC Jameson
- Punxsutawney Area Hospital
- UPMC Hamot - Bayfront Garage
- St Vincent Health Center
- UPMC Presbyterian UPMC Mercy
- Children's Hospital of UPMC
- Allegheny General Hospital
- West Penn Hospital
- Shadyside Health Education & Research
- UPMC Passavant Hospital
- UPMC St Clair Hospital
- UPMC St Margaret Hospital
- UPMC East
Right now, only a handful of hospitals have been released so far and you can get them right away.
