Air Methods Responds to ABC News Air Ambulance Investigation
March 17 2016 - 9:00AM
Air Methods released the following statement in response to the ABC
News report:
We appreciate ABC News in its willingness to address the issue
of cost in its report of the emergency air medical transportation
industry. While the topic is an important one, critical context was
left out of the report about our financial investment and
challenges that persist in the healthcare industry.
Each year, nearly half a million critically ill or seriously ill
patients rely on emergency air medicine for lifesaving care.
As an industry, we provide access to more than 82 million people –
one in four Americans – who otherwise would not have been able to
reach a trauma center within an hour if not flown by helicopter.
When transported, these patients are in such critical
condition, we have to continue the care in the air. We’re in
essence a flying emergency room and we only respond when a
physician or a first responder calls us. When every minute counts,
emergency air medical transport and treatment is often not just the
best choice for saving a life, it’s the only choice.
Like a fire station, our fleet and highly trained clinicians are
always ready to deploy every moment of every day, whether there is
an emergency or not. Yet, real-time deployment readiness requires
enormous financial resources and ongoing investment. There is a
very real cost that goes into providing access to lifesaving
services twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a
year.
- We have more than 300 air medical bases and each base costs, on
average, $3 million to operate and maintain each year.
- The multi-million dollar aircraft, employing highly trained
pilots, mechanics, flight nurses, flight paramedics and AirCom
specialists, maintaining crew quarters, state-of-the-art equipment
and administrative costs – these are all fixed costs, meaning we
incur these costs just by staying ready at all times, whether we
fly or not.
Aircraft, equipment, highly specialized staff—both clinical and
aviation—and ongoing training are only part of the equation.
When we are asked to save a life, we deploy without regard to a
patient’s ability to pay. That means we sometimes don’t receive
payment for our services. And when we do, the payments we receive
for Medicare or Medicaid patients don’t come close to covering the
actual cost we incur for providing our service. This means we are
essentially losing money on seven out of 10 transports due to
extremely low government payments.
At the heart of the issue is that health insurance isn’t doing
what health insurance is supposed to do— protect its members. The
core purpose of health insurance is to protect individuals from
catastrophic events, yet private health plans continue to shrink
their coverage, shifting toward high deductible, high out-of-pocket
models and reducing coverage for their members. They don’t offer
patients adequate protection—financially or medically. No one
wins in this scenario, except the insurance companies who choose to
abandon their members by paying a minimal amount and walking away,
leaving the hospital, Air Methods, and most importantly, their
member and our patients to deal with the aftermath of their poor
business practice. In an ideal world, everyone pays their
fair share, and if they did, the charge per transport would reduce
significantly. In today’s reality, many insurance companies
are doing the bare minimum and expecting the rest of us, especially
their members, to shoulder the burden.
Some have asked why we don’t include pricing on our release
forms and the truth is because the number one focus of family and
loved ones in these traumatic situations is on making clinical
decisions so their loved ones survive. That’s their number one
focus – and it’s our number one focus too.
The fact of the matter is our fractured healthcare system
creates enormous barriers and makes lifesaving care more difficult
and costly to deliver. Every day, we are forced to operate
within the system that exists and do our best to protect the people
we serve. We face regulatory burdens not only from the FAA, but
also from a variety of local and federal healthcare oversight
bodies. We seek every efficiency and innovation to keep our costs
down, but the nature of our service—and the complexities of the
healthcare industry—dictate costs that are beyond our control. Our
charges are similar to other for-profit and non-profit air medical
providers.
We don’t like when our patients are put in these situations and
we do everything we can to help them. We understand that every
patient's individual and financial circumstances are unique, and
our team is dedicated to partnering with every one of them as they
navigate through the post-flight and critical care process. We have
a long-established charity care process in place to allow us to
reduce patient financial responsibility within our legal
parameters, and our Patient Financial Counselors are here to
help. We believe that everyone deserves access to lifesaving
care.
Visit our website to see the full transcript and video of
Kim Downs, a parent to a former Air Methods patient, during her
interview with ABC News.
CONTACTS: Christina Brodsly, Director,
Corporate Communications (303) 256-4122 or
christina.brodsly@airmethods.com. Please contact Christina to be
included on the company’s e-mail distribution list.
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