Angel Medflight: Expensive Air Transport, But It Might Keep You Alife

Angel Medflight is an organization that provides a range of worldwide air ambulance services. It has a range of services, but what is special about the company is that it provides medical air transport.

Integrated Medical Transport

But Angel Medflight is not only medical air transport. As required, Angel Medflight organizes ground ambulance transfers. This can be in combination with a patient air transport, or can be separate as a stand-alone hospital transport.

Angel Medflight operates a fleet of fixed wing, 100% medically dedicated aircraft. They have staff of trained professionals, who are always on call, at the airport, next to the aircraft, ready to respond to a medical evacuation. The focus of the medical and flight crews is on the safety of the patient.

Medical Personnel

There is a minimum of two medical personnel to accompany the patient on each transfer. One of them is a physician or a critical care flight nurse. Then, paramedics, respiratory therapists, physicians assistants and perfusionists can be available to assist the patient during transport ~ it all depends upon the patient’s needs.

Angel Medflight’s medical personnel are all board certified, air certified and have at least five years experience in emergency medicine. They receive a rigorous initial orientation prior to flying with patients. Also, all medical staff participate in 100 hours of didactic and clinical continuing education each year.

Medical Equipment

On board of its aircrafts, Angel Medflight’s standard medical equipment consists of stretchers, oxygen, ventilator, cardiac monitor/defibrillator, resuscitation equipment, suction, intubation equipment, balloon pump, IV, ACLS drug complement, and any other specialty equipment necessary for each individual patient. Angel Medflight also carries the most proactive array of antibiotics for bacterial and parasitic infections in the air ambulance industry.

Is Air Ambulance Transport Covered by Insurance?

If this all sounds expensive, it is. To have your insurance cover a portion (or all) of the medical expenses, in most cases, medical necessity must be proven. The Angel Medflight’s insurance division must be contacted first, and they will work to obtain prior authorization from the patient’s insurance carrier to help lessen the costs associated with medical transport.

What is “’ medical necessity”?
It is commonly understood that ‘medical necessity’ means ‘that which is reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of an illness or injury’.

Angel Medflight has insurance contracts with the majority of major national health insurance companies, but not all. When considering their services, you should first find out if they work with your insurance company.

Typically Angel Medflight helps patients file insurance paperwork. What is important is that they help you show ‘medical necessity’ and obtain insurance authorization. Actually, Angel Medflight insurance personnel will file all necessary insurance paperwork for you.

Medical Transport Choice

Sometimes air transport makes the critical difference between life and death, and yes, air transport is paramount for the health and survival of the patient.

At other cases, when the patient is more stable and time is less critical, alternative ambulance services are to be considered. This is what specialty patient medical transport services Angel Medflight can offer besides its famous air ambulance service:

Long range ground transport. We transport the patient via ground ambulance staffed with two drivers, medical personnel, equipment and medications

AMTRAK medical escort. We reserve a special needs car and staff it with our medical personnel and necessary medications and equipment.

Commercial flight with medical escort. Patient is accompanied by an ER or ICU Physician, Critical Care Flight Nurse or Critical Care Flight Paramedic (and of course all necessary medical equipment) on a commercial airline.

Commercial airline stretcher service. For international flights only. We arrange with the airline to remove several passenger seats from the rear of the aircraft to accommodate patient, stretcher, medical personnel, and equipment.

Contact details for Angel Medflight, patient medical transport is tel. 1-877-ANGEL70.

Before you call them, just a bit of warning re. the expenses. As a reflection of the current economic conditions, insurance companies are pulling a much longer insurance claims process, even for pre-authorized medical flights. Angel MedFlight has expanded services to include specialized medical claims processing, however, do not be naive. Healthcare insurance carriers are watching their claims more carefully as medical costs rise and their profits and insurance adoption decrease. What this means is a virtually automatic denial of coverage for air medical flights, and a longer, tougher road to claims payment.

© copyright http://besafeinsure.com 2009 – all rights reserved.