STARS Air Ambulance has some fantastic news for Portage la Prairie patients who need to travel to a Winnipeg hospital in an emergency. Media lead for Manitoba Chad Saxon explains how important the new soon-to-be-in-operation heliport is for Portage.

"It'll save roughly about half an hour every mission to have that helipad directly located at the hospital," explains Saxon. "Currently we have to land at the Southport Airport. Any patient being transferred by STARS from Portage to Winnipeg has to be taken from an ambulance to Southport. There's a significant time there"

He notes it also will hugely benefit patients in comfort and care.

"We're not having to transfer the patient from one stretcher to another," Saxon continues. "When the heliport is open, our crew will arrive at the hospital. We'll be able to go into the hospital, transfer the patient to our STARS stretcher, and then transport them directly to the hospital. There's no work being done in between. The time savings is incredible."

He notes they consider the first hour of an emergency the golden hour when health service benefits the most, and the lack of the need to drive to Southport allows for a half hour less of that time to be spent with more care rather than transportation.