A family road trip can be a fun adventure. But if you are traveling long distances to help a loved one get needed medical care, or to return home after a complicated medical procedure, the trip will likely be more stressful than fun. For many families, commercial air medical transportation is a safer and quicker option. It also can be surprisingly cost-effective.
Consider this scenario: Your spouse needs open-heart surgery and the best-rated doctor to perform the procedure is more than 2,000 miles away. The surgery is needed soon, but is not an emergency. You could drive to the top-ranked doctor and hospital, but how will you manage the trip home with a spouse who is in fragile health, in pain and at risk for blood clots?
Or maybe you want your mother to continue her recovery from a stroke at a facility closer to home. By car, the drive usually takes a total of 24 hours, and you’re concerned about your ability to care for her medical needs along the way.
In both situations, air medical transportation can be a safer, more comfortable choice than transport by ground ambulance, van service or car.
What Are Common Commercial Air Medical Transportation Options?
Commercial air medical transportation is one mode of transporting people who have non-emergency medical conditions. It can be an ideal solution for people who can sit up and:
• Are recovering from surgery
• Receiving treatment for cancer
• Are physically impaired or have orthopedic injuries
• Have a neurologic disorder or brain injury
It’s also worth noting that while flight attendants are trained in basic first aid and emergency resuscitation techniques, they cannot be expected to provide ongoing medical care. That includes monitoring a traveler’s health care needs, giving medication, or administering supplemental oxygen during a flight.
How an Air Medical Transportation Service Can Help
Arranging air medical transportation requires more than filling out a form on an airline’s website or making a call to customer support. Although airlines can readily handle requests for special meals or wheelchairs, air medical transportation almost always requires help from a company that specializes in medical travel assistance. A medical travel assistance company, such as SentinelMED, can help assess a traveler’s medical and personal care needs and identify any language or cultural concerns. It can then help determine if air medical transportation by commercial airline is a good choice for the traveler. If it is, SentinelMED will make all travel arrangements, including booking flights, making the airline aware of mobility or dietary requests, and arranging ground transportation to and from the airport. The air medical transportation company may also arrange for a medical escort to assist the traveler.
The medical escort’s role will be to accompany the traveler and his or her family during all stages of travel. That can include from discharge at a hospital or medical facility, during airport check-in and screening, during air travel, and to the traveler’s arrival at a receiving health care facility or the home of a caregiver.
Working with an air medical transportation service can help caregivers focus on travel preparations instead of worrying about logistics and details.
Medical Transportation Services from SentinelMED
SentinelMED provides medical transportation, medical repatriation and medical escort services to individuals who require medical assistance to travel long distances in safety and comfort. In many cases, patients travel on commercial airlines with a SentinelMED escort who is an ICU- or emergency-medicine professional. This service is a cost-effective alternative to an air ambulance.
The SentinelMED team understands the complexity of delivering exceptional care to patients who need assistance during travel. Please contact us to learn more about the services that SentinelMED offers or its staff.
