Why was ORNGE chopper delayed 44 minutes as cyclist lay dying in rural hospital?

Lindsey Sanders, second from righ

Lindsey Sanders was a smart, community-minded young student at the University of Guelph with a future as promising as it gets. She was named Citizen of the Year for saving a senior’s life; she did important research in Honduras.

In an instant on a road in Uxbridge last summer that changed. A truck crashed into her bike, leaving her critically injured.

She had been on her way to visit her grandparents.

Four months later the Sanders case is one of a series that provincial investigators are probing to see if problems at Ontario’s ORNGE air ambulance service extend to patient care.

The Star has discovered that in the Sanders accident a series of mistakes and miscues led to a 44-minute delay in dispatching an air ambulance helicopter from Toronto in a desperate bid to save her life.

ORNGE documents show the medical air service is trying to reduce the number of times it launches an aircraft and then calls it back. The problem is this policy has resulted in numerous occasions when the air ambulance should have been launched but is delayed.