FOCUS ON RURAL AMERICA:

Mission Driven Culture Serving Those Most in Need

Air Evac Lifeteam is committed to providing increased access to emergency trauma care to rural Americans. In a life- or limb-threatening medical emergency, a successful patient recovery depends on how much time it takes to deliver that patient to the emergency room. Approximately 90% of Air Evac's patient transports originate from a rural area as defined by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Air Evac Lifeteam believes that those who choose a rural way of life should have the same benefits when it comes to emergency care as those who choose to live in a metropolitan community.

Critical Facts: Access to Definitive Health Care for Rural Americans

• 46.7 million rural Americans live more than an hour away from at level 1 or 2 trauma center. (1)
• Rural trauma victims are twice as likely to die from an accident or medical condition versus an urban victim due to failure to arrive at a hospital within the Golden Hour. (2)
• Numerous changes in the nation's delivery of health care have made the trauma and tertiary care centers a vital hub for outlying hospitals. The result is an increasing need to transport a greater number of patients longer distances for complex, time-dependent care, such as primary cardiac intervention, strokes and complex surgery. (3)
• Rural hospitals have undergone changes in mission and structure during the last 20 years. In an effort to help maintain a sufficient number of hospitals, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have developed the Critical Access Hospital program, which pays the full cost for Medicare beneficiaries. This has come in exchange for structural changes in the hospital which include reducing beds to 25 or less and shortening average length of stay to less than 96 hours. The goal is to keep hospitals open which is a tremendous benefit to rural communities. However, it also leads to a concurrent need to transfer patients with complex health conditions to distant trauma and tertiary care centers, requiring a rapid and even more sophisticated medical transport system. (3)
• Increasing numbers of hospitals, even in rural areas, are on diversion status due to lack of bed availability and access to specialty physicians. This diversion, often requiring transport to distant facilities, is now becoming commonplace throughout the country. (3)
• A decreasing number of specialist physicians - general, orthopedic and neurosurgeons - has reduced the availability of emergency specialty care at community hospitals making it necessary to refer patients to trauma and tertiary centers either directly from accident scenes or in secondary transfers from the emergency department. (3)
• In the past 10 years, there has been an 8 percent decline in the number of emergency departments in community hospitals. This is a trend that is expected to continue. (4)