The glow of a TV offers light to the subdued room, the low murmur of dialogue from a reality show about first responders trickling from the speakers, as three guys try to relax. An alarm tone from their phones pierces the room, the lights turn on, the room flickers to color, and the men, wearing bright red flight suits, jump into motion. Art becomes life.
"An intracranial hemorrhage at Chester County," says flight paramedic Doug Simpson, BS, NRP, FP-C, as he reads from dispatch notes on a computer below the TV. Flight nurse Joe O'Leary, BSN, RN, CFRN, walks around the suite in Doylestown, gathering what will be needed for their flight. Pilot Eric Houghton heads to the helipad for the final preparations for takeoff.
A brain bleed demands immediate attention, triggering the call for the PennSTAR team to carry the patient to some of the best neurosurgical care in the world at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
PennSTAR, the critical care transportation service of Penn Medicine, is simultaneously one of the most visible and invisible pieces of the organization: visible because its helicopters are effectively billboards racing across the sky, yet invisible because it is a thread, not often seen, that ties the system together.
The crew's suite adjacent to the Emergency Department at Penn Medicine Doylestown Health is one of two PennSTAR bases. The other is at Wings Airfield in Blue Bell. When Doylestown Health joined the University of Pennsylvania Health System in the spring of 2025, PennSTAR was able to move back into a hospital for the first time since the 1980s, giving the program more direct access to patients and clinical staff. PennSTAR now has a reach from the Poconos to Delaware, from the Jersey shore to Lancaster.
The phones buzz again. It's time to go.
