Mom Says Copter Flew Her Ill Child To Wrong Hospital Spokane Woman Says She Was Separated When She Wasn’t Allowed On Board

A Spokane woman says she was separated from her sick little boy after an emergency helicopter service took him to the wrong hospital.

Tammy Callihan was frantic when 3-year-old Jamie was whisked away on a Northwest Medstar helicopter last week and she wasn’t allowed on board.

The toddler suffered a seizure on Mount Spokane and Callihan, 23, faced a long drive to Sacred Heart Medical Center, where she said she’d asked medical workers to take her son.

Things got even worse when Callihan arrived at the hospital. Jamie wasn’t there. A nurse said he was flown to Deaconess Medical Center instead.

“I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on,” Callihan said Tuesday. “What if something serious had happened and I wasn’t able to be there with him?”

Parents often get to fly with children during emergencies, and they usually get to choose the hospital, said Jean Bening, Northwest Medstar administrator.

She refused to talk about what happened in Jamie’s case on Feb. 21, adding his mother didn’t make a complaint with the helicopter service.

A spokeswoman at Deaconess Medical Center said the helicopter crew wasn’t told where to take the boy.

When no preference is indicated, pilots use a rotation system, and Deaconess was next on the list, said spokeswoman Priscilla Gilkey.

Last year the two hospitals combined their helicopter services, Lifebird and HeartFlite, ending what once had been a highly competitive venture.

Callihan says she told medical crews twice that she wanted her son to go to Sacred Heart, because that’s where his pediatrician worked.

Medical workers told her she couldn’t join her son on the helicopter because they’d brought “an extra passenger,” Callihan said.

“If I was able to ride with him, none of this would have happened,” she said.

When she finally arrived at Deaconess, doctors there didn’t even know her son’s name and referred to him as “John Doe,” Callihan said.

Flight crews had passed along Jamie’s medical condition - but not his name - to emergency room workers at Deaconess, said Gilkey.

Bening said weight restrictions sometimes keep family members from riding along on flights. Other times, medical crews will ask the family to drive if a patient is especially ill.

Jamie’s doctors haven’t figured out why he had the seizure, which struck shortly after he lay down to take a nap.

He’s now back home with his mother, sister and brother in their East Trent apartment, Callihan said.

“The biggest thing is to stop these things from ever happening again,” said Warren Adams, Callihan’s cousin. “Any parent would not want to go through that. It’s insane.”