A new CPR device installed in a Paso Robles-based emergency air ambulance has made medical care quicker and less strenuous for both the patient and helicopter clinicians.
“It’s very difficult to do CPR in a helicopter. I equate it to trying to do CPR in the front seat of a Honda Civic,” Mercy Air 34 Clinical Base Lead Jeffrey Hagins said. “You don’t have that much room, … you’re kind of hunched over the patient. You have to be out of your seatbelt while you’re doing that. Doing that in a moving aircraft isn’t safe.”
As the only air ambulance in SLO County, the Mercy Air 34 helicopter flies to help critically ill and injured people after receiving 911 calls and requests for hospital transfers. It often transports patients to hospitals in larger urban and metropolitan centers with more resources.
Hagins is also a flight paramedic for Mercy Air 34. Over the past five years, he and his team have transported patients facing cardiac emergencies, seizures, strokes, burns, snake bites, and trauma-related injuries to different parts of San Luis Obispo County for hospital care, to San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Riverside, and many regions in between.
“Our flights from here [SLO County] to San Francisco are about 75 minutes, but it can be over three and a half hours by ambulance,” Hagins said.
Until a month ago, helicopter clinicians were giving patients CPR by hand, either out of precaution or because their condition required it.
Now, through a collaboration between Mercy Air’s parent company, Air Methods, and Zoll Medical Devices and Technology Solutions, an automated CPR device called Zoll AutoPulse NXT provides uninterrupted support to patients almost as soon as they are carried into the helicopter.
“I flew a patient the other day from a ranch to a cardiac hospital in San Luis Obispo,” Hagins said. “The flight was about 13 minutes with CPR going. It would have been about 45 minutes by ambulance. So, there’s good time saving, and we were able to keep CPR going the whole time.”
The AutoPulse device looks like a large plastic board paired with an elastic band that separates into two Velcro pieces. The patient is placed over the board, and the band is centered over their chest. When the device is turned on, it constricts the band and compresses the patient’s chest against the hard board. The action produces the same effect as manual CPR.
In its first month aboard Mercy Air 34, the CPR device assisted four patients. Three of them experienced cardiac arrests in their homes and received “flying ICU” help after 911 calls.
Mercy Air has been serving California and Nevada for more than 35 years. Nearly all Mercy Air bases in California are now equipped with the special CPR device.
But the Paso Robles one is slightly more unique. Mercy Air 34 achieved first-responder status in central California—a certification that allows the medical team to identify a safe landing zone and immediately start patient care. It eliminates the need to wait for ground responders to secure a potential safe landing zone, subsequently shaving minutes off response times.
“Most of the bases in our company don’t have [first-responder status], but we wanted to get it because of the geographical layout of our county, and it just makes us more of an asset to our fellow first responders,” Hagins said.
Fast fact
• Resident physicians of the Marian Regional Medical Center family medicine residency program helped hundreds of Arroyo Grande and Nipomo high school students on June 12 by providing free sports physical assessments. Community doctors and program faculty members also joined the physician volunteers. The initiative removed a potential barrier to participating by equipping young athletes with the necessary medical clearance to safely participate in their chosen sports. Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 6, 2025.
Is there any way we can try to oppose this? Or figure out how to keep this open? Years ago I along with a group of fellow dirt bikers helped land a helicopter out at Pozo, Turkey Flats, then ran their emergency medical staff as well as the paramedics to a difficult to access dirt bike path. They then provided life saving medical intervention to a rider who broke their back, neck and had serious brain swelling. He needed immediate stabilization and only due to the speed of care received via the strategically placed Mercy helicopter base in Paso, was he able to keep his life. A move like this will put the nearest helicopter hours out and will inevitably kill kids, men, and women of our area who could have been saved if it weren’t for the bureaucracy of it all. Is there anything that we as county citizens can do?