HEMS and "take a look attitude"
Havoc, I think the attitude of your chief pilot is not wrong.
Few years ago in the same base I'm on duty now, the crew were alerted for a mountain SAR mission. The captain decided that the weather was "no go", and did not accept the task.
The patient suffered neurological permanent damages.
One of the mountain rescuers, arrived on the spot by feet, had the good idea of stating that the weather was good.
This gave the start of a legal action of the patient family, today still going on. Even if the captain is the only person with the right to decide about it, the dispute is exactly about the decision and about the weather.
I'm pretty sure he did the right thing, but I'm also sure that if he took-off that day, no matter what the rescuer said, he could have show that on the way to the spot there was no visibility, even if on the top of that mountain the sun was shining.
When we are called for hospital transfers, that is another matter. Reaching the patient could be possible, but we need to be hundred percent sure that once we put it on board, we arrive at destination. When it is uncertain, we don't accept the mission, especially at night.
When we are called during daylight for what we call a "primary", we don't accept the mission only when just a take-off is dangerous. If we try, we take off informing the requesting unit that our arrival is subject to meteo conditions.
We "take a look" but of course we never enter IMC conditions or take a risk of unwanted IMC.
A different situation again when we are called for the islands. But this would be out of thread.