American Air medical companies make high profits
 

Just found out that the air medical sector in the U.S is highly profitable

https://ibb.co/hvHPYF

Chris,

Look up info on Air Methods Inc. based in Englewood, Colorado and see what you find out. Their financial information is what you want to consider and their need to restructure.

Although they are the biggest, they are still just one company. It must be very profitable, as many of these smaller companies can't seem open bases fast enough.

Whereas all air ambulance services in the UK are a charity or NHS operated. It really puts things into perspective.

Says something about the inability of a private sector "aviation business" to operate in the UK due to the costs and bureaucracy as I see it.

Much as I would like to agree with you SASless, I fear we cant blame everything on the politicians. In the US medicine is a profit making business like anything else. Even trauma, which is mostly funded by university and territorial bodies manages to offload many transportation bills to third parties. In the UK medicine is free at point of use, and due to historical quirks is funded by charities. So flying a patient in the US creates revenue, whereas in the UK it consumes donations.

I am not making any political point; if you look at Germany or Norway you will see very slick operations more akin to our model than the US. I still believe that if the system were part of the NHS like hernia operations or general practice we would have a cracking system

The average cost is like $52000 per flight. Something like $13000+ the moment the skids come off the ground.

The net is full of stories about Americans getting their arses billed off...
The ADAC charges the insurances about €100 per flight minute for a twin, pilot, ER doctor and a paramedic, IIRC.

Airborne 2 minutes after the alarm, max. 20 minutes to reach the patient. 50km standard radius.

Do the maths.

I will be the first to agree the profit motive and multiple layers of administrative costs combined with the industry models generate way too high a cost to the individual consumer in this country especially when any level of government gets into any part of the act beyond ensuring open, free, and fair competition.

There is a move towards Single Payer Healthcare.....think government....and that terrifies knowing government manages to genuinely screw things up!

The billing only happens when a patient is carried. All the callouts that are just return to base have to be paid for by the ones who actually receive service.

The UK has just the opposite of single payer healthcare SASless. We have 37 million taxpayers paying. That means that if nature makes you sick you get treatment regardless of ability to pay and medical bills are not the commonest cause of bankruptcy. Not perfect because the politicians interfere, but far less political interference than in the US!! Political point made

Australian air ambulance services are also a solid income stream for the operators: Toll and Babcock/Australian Helicopters wouldn't be in to a substantial investment in machinery and crews otherwise.

I saw a 9 figure sum reported for the five AW139s contracted to the Victorian Air Ambulance contract over ten years; no doubt Toll would be well into the same revenue for NSW.

edit World-class helicopter fleet for Ambulance Victoria

$A550 million: estimated!

Yeah North Dakota or Montana passed a bill to prevent overly high pricing and now air medical companies are not offering monthly coverage plans anymore.

Is that North Australian helicopters?

I guess Australian helicopters was sold to Babcock.

The term "single-payer" is somewhat deceptive. It should be "single-payee".

Australian Helicopters was sold to Inaer which was absorbed into Bond and then Babcock