What is the cost of air medical trasfers for the taxpayers?

[ElinaMak]

Possible headline(s):

What is the cost of air medical trasfers for the taxpayers?

Pitch - Summary

Greece has around 6.000 islands and 227 of them are inhabited. Only few of these islands have the appropriate medical infrastructure in case of emergency. When needed, the Hellenic Air Force comes to the rescue of these citizens.

Numbers & Data:

Only for the first 19 days of July 2018: -86 citizens needed to be transfered by plane or hellicopter, -136,4 flying hours.

The air medical transfers are operated by different types of aircrafts, most common types are the Super Puma, C-130, Α-109, ΑΒ-205/B-212, C-27J.

Data are collected by the website of the Hellenic Air Force but need to be combined with those of the Ambulance service.

The minister of defense has said in the past that the cost for one hour of flight is 20.000 euros. Can the debt ridden country afford more of these transfers? Has this service got worsened because of the fiancial crisis?

Are there any alternatives for those in need in the islands? Is it better for some islands to invest in hospital infrastructure or telemedecine rather than "burn" the money in flight hours?

Work so far

With the data I collected so far:

1. I can plot the number of trasnfers since 2012 up to today.

2. What is the frequncy of these transfers every month.

Nice to have:

I requested further data from the Ministry regarding: The cost of these transfers in accordance with the type of the aircraft. However, the economical aspects of this study are many more to take into consideration like the effort of the personel required for these transfers etc.

Which are the geographical areas more in need.

I will not display the demographic data of the transfered citizens (was it a child from "x" place, a newborn, an older person etc) in order to avoid any fingertip search and profile formation.

[pasiegrist]

Hey Elina,

it seems you found some trend here. The numbers are declining.

• If you would plot it by month you could include 2018 data which would be neat and we would probably see some seasonal changes. If you do it like in your linechart by year, you shouldn't use 2018.

• Do you have any explanation for the decline? It would be nice to have something to compare with? Was tourism low in the last few years on the islands?

• I would love to see some regional analysis.

• Your mentioned, that you will not disply the demographic data of the transfered citizens. Do you have this data? If yes, you could make aggregations to look for interesting facts.

[troboukis]

At the bar graph I think that you should leave only the y axis grid. Nice story! I'd love to see more graphs to get a better grasp of it.

[ElinaMak]

Update

I have focused on the number of patients transferred the last years and the months with the most transfers. As Patrice commented, indeed there is a pattern, a decline for which, I do not have yet a solid explanation (less money for transfers, less incidents, more hospital infrastructure..) will need to talk to some people first. At this stage, I was more concentrated on finding all the data I needed. But, these are Authorities...

Your project content:

Changes in direction or topic and issues/ problems:

Unfortunately the Air Force has responded to me via email that the data regarding the places from which patients are transferred and aircraft costs are mentioned in classified documents. Called them back and actually they told me that they do not have such a database. Well, next step is for me to go there and get this information / documents which I assume exists since almost everyday they upload info on their website with the places of the transfers (but indeed, this information is not contained in the tables that list the transfers for all the years).

[tsp2123]

Hey! Interesting dataset here. It would be good to have the year mentioned in the title of your graph but that's a minor point. I'm interested in seeing more!

[sarahslo]

wow, something i've never considered. in addition to getting the cost from the ministry, can you get or do they have what the medical emergency was? i'd be curious to see how serious the incident is. are they flying people out because they broke an ankle or had a heart attack?

[SimoneLuc]

hey elina original topic here! Not easy to get to the data you want to. but I see you try hard - with some success :-) I would like know more about the transferred people: who they are, from which countries they come, what their suffering is etc. - maybe you can get some more data from insurances?

[malbasi]

Great work so far. Can't wait to see the final. Here are a few things I would like to see

Content:

• If you can't get the costs for the people managing the flights, I think you can make some general estimations about how much it costs to run one of these helicopters per hour. It's obviously not ideal, but it will give you a starting point. Obviously the prices would differ a bit, but maybe you can get the info from one of the (many) helicopter airports in NY. Or, worse comes to worse, just estimate it based on fuel costs. There are some websites that will tell you the fuel economy for different choppers.

https://www.aircraftcompare.com/helicopter-airplane/Eurocopter-AS332-Super-Puma/222

Design:

• drop the grid lines from the x-axis for your horizontal bar charts
• normalize your colors, you're using one blue in one chart and another in the next. Same with background colors.
• mention the year in the transfers per month chart