Air Evac Provides Emergency Helicopter Service for Area

Between Dec. 1 and April 30, Air Evac Lifestream of Springfield, Mo., received 123 calls for emergency assistance in Benton, Washington and Carroll counties. That’s in addition to 74 calls from area hospitals requesting that patients be transferred to other facilities.

And all of that was handled by the air ambulance company’s crew of three and its Bell 206 Long Ranger helicopter based at Northwest Medical Center in Springdale.

The “primary requests” included calls pertaining to heart attacks, motor vehicle accidents and other emergencies, said Chris Yuhas, regional nurse manager for Air Evac in Little Rock.

The biggest advantage of calling Air Evac, Yuhas said, is speed. With a helicopter, paramedics can get to a scene quickly and a patient can often be transferred to a hospital faster than by an ambulance traveling through traffic.

“We position our aircraft in small towns,” Yuhas said. “We are where you are when you need us. We are here to take care of you. We do not focus on the central metropolitan areas.”

Yuhas described the helicopters as “flying emergency rooms.”

Air Evac has 34 bases in 11 states, including five in Arkansas — Springdale, Jonesboro, Yellville, Paris and Vilonia.

Air Evac was formed 18 years ago when a group of private citizens in the small town of West Plains, Mo., decided they wanted to provide better access to emergency care for people who live in rural communities. They bought a helicopter and started Air Evac Lifeteam, which is now the largest independently owned air ambulance company in the United States.

“The mission of Air Evac Lifeteam is to provide emergency care and rapid medical transport to people who live in rural areas, often miles away from acute health care facilities that can provide the medical care they need,” said Colin Collins, Air Evac’s president and CEO.

“Since the opening of our first base in 1985, we have flown more than 60,000 patients. Many of these patients were transported directly from the scenes of accidents or other medical emergencies, while others were transferred from smaller community hospitals to larger metropolitan hospitals,” he said.

Each Air Evac crew includes a pilot, paramedic and registered nurse on standby 24 hours a day ready to respond to medical emergencies.

“We take great pride in having one of the best safety records in the air medical industry,” Collins said. “According to a recent study conducted by the University of Chicago Hospitals, the average accident rate for all helicopter air medical services in the United States during the last decade was about 10 accidents per 100,000 hours of flight time. Air Evac Lifeteam’s accident rate is about four-and-a-half accidents per 100,000 — less than half the national average.”

Air Evac was the first air ambulance service to offer a membership program — an idea it borrowed from the REGA Foundation in Switzerland. Members who are flown by Air Evac for a life- or limb-threatening emergency will not receive a bill for the flight. If the member has an insurance company, the insurance company will be billed. The member, who pays annual dues to Air Evac, will not have to pay any co-payments or deductibles.

“There are currently more than 200,000 people covered under Air Evac Lifeteam membership plans,” said Ken Harper, Air Evac’s membership director. “These people have the reassurance of knowing that if they ever have to use our air ambulance service, their family will not be burdened with a bill that can average between $5,000 and $8,000.”