Stable patients may qualify for a less costly form of transport than air ambulance. Call us today to determine if your patient might use a nurse escort trip by airline, long distance ground transport, or Amtrak. Escort trips can offer the patient as much as a 50% savings over the cost of Essex Air services.

For a facility to accept the patient and assign him a bed, a receiving doctor typically has to call admissions. First a facility must be chosen. If you need help in doing that, we can assist. If you have determined which facility you want to bring the patient to, the next step is to determine who will be the receiving doctor. If you have a primary physician that practices there, have her call the facility and ask for admissions. If you need help in getting a physician, we can help you. Admissions will assign a doctor if a little bit is known about the air ambulance service patient. You need to have the doctors speak so that the receiving facility will accept that patient. We can assist in facilitating that if necessary. We sometimes need to follow up to ensure that the receiving doctor is aware that she needs to call. But we will manage the process to make sure that it all gets done for you.

Our planes could definitely hold one extra passenger with the possibility of two, and what will determine that is once we do a medical on the patient, the medical department will review whether a second passenger will be safe to be on the plane in regard to what’s in the best interest of the patient. Depending on the type of patient transportation carrier aircraft and depending on where we’re flying, if we’re flying overseas generally we will only take one passenger. If we’re flying a few hours flight in the United States and it’s on a jet aircraft you can take two passengers. Depending on the medical, generally if the patient is on a ventilator or is in critical condition we’d like to limit it to one, just so that our crew will have more room to maneuver on the aircraft if something were to go wrong, and as for on a prop or turbo-prop, if we include two medical personnel onboard you can bring one passenger along. But if the patient is stable and we only need to have one medical attendant then you’re more than welcome to bring two passengers on patient transportation carrier. Let us know of your particular requirements and we will do everything we can to accommodate your needs.

Aircraft are regulated by part 135 of the Federal Aviation Administration. These are strict regulations governing aircraft operation, maintenance, and pilot training. Our service transportation service meets or exceeds these regulations.

The absolute minimums (and they vary from state to state) include FAA approved stretcher and oxygen systems; provisions for cardiopulmonary monitoring, external respiratory and circulatory support, IV maintenance, and at least a certified Emergency Medical Technician.

Our long distance ambulance aircraft are staffed with two medical personnel and if it’s a vent patient, it will have a critical care nurse and respiratory therapist who is specially trained to manage the ventilator. We have a ventilator and all ancillary equipment on board our aircraft along with other advanced life support equipment. Our medical team will go into the hospital to assess your vented patient prior to the trip. We then switch the patient to our equipment and stabilize her prior to transport out to our plane. When we arrive at the destination, we will reverse the process and go into the hospital to switch the equipment and stabilize her. In addition, prior to departing, we will thoroughly go over the long distance ambulance trip report with the attending nurses so that they know what vent settings were during the trip and how the patient responded.