Can anyone book an international medical flight?
Most international medical flights take off following a medical emergency overseas. If the patient has a valid travel insurance plan, someone will call the assistance center and request a medical flight back home as soon as possible. This is called medical repatriation.
You are now alone, in an unfamiliar country, in a highly stressful situation! But what if no insurance company pays for a medical flight? That is a problem. It’s also a problem if the patient is underinsured up to a certain cap and traveling in a country where the cost of private health care is expensive, like the USA. Or if the insurance company declines medical repatriation coverage for whatever reason, for example, because the sudden illness is directly related to a pre-existing health condition.
Reputable medical repatriation companies provide instant access to a worldwide network of local and international medical transportation providers, no matter where the patient is stranded. These companies can be accessed 24/7 from anywhere worldwide and organize an international patient transfers from start to finish.
The good news is that during a crisis, anyone can book and pay for a medical flight for an infirm family member, a client, or an employee, by contacting a provider of international medical repatriation services directly. And that is not a luxury position, as most international patient transfers take the coordinated efforts of more than one service provider, each working within their expertise.
When is the best time to organize a medical flight?
A traveler who falls ill or gets injured while visiting abroad often faces not only a medical crisis but also a financial one. The cost of medical treatment can be high and rising with each day that passes by. If no insurance coverage is available, family and friends will be very interested in bringing the patient back to the home community as soon as possible for more affordable follow-up treatment.
However, it is in the patient’s best interest that transport is arranged at the right moment: early enough, still early enough. It will be a decision between doctors. Following a medical emergency, the patient needs to be stabilized sufficiently before a doctor will sign off a fit to fly declaration.
Therefore, when patients are transported onboard commercial flights, these missions are categorized as non-emergency or non-urgent commercial air transport. Even though the situation started as a medical emergency, transport is delayed to several days later, when the patient is stable and needs professional support but is no longer considered at risk of complications.
What options are available for people who need a medical flight?
Being stable enough to fly is only the first condition. More questions must be answered whenever medical transport is needed before the patient is medically cleared to travel by air.
The answer is often not black or white and will also depend on finding a suitable mode of transportation and organizing the necessary patient care en route. In general, there are a few medical flight options:
- Commercial flight, as a regular passenger, escorted by an aeromedical attendant.
- Commercial flight, lying down on an airline stretcher, accompanied by aeromedical staff.
- As a passenger on a private charter with a medical escort
- As a stretcher patient on a private charter with a medical escort
- As a stretcher patient on an air ambulance with an aeromedical crew
It would be easy if every patient could be transported on a non-stop flight between two major airport hubs. But that is only sometimes the case.
That’s why many international medical transports involve a combination of different services: a road trip by ambulance, for example, followed by a short medical flight by a local air ambulance, followed by a long international flight on a stretcher onboard a commercial airliner, followed by another ground ambulance transfer in the destination country.
What services can you expect from a medical flight company?
You can expect a reputable aeromedical company to take the lead and ask the right questions to understand your patient’s needs. You will then be presented with a quote and a clear plan to safely and responsibly transport the patient.
An excellent medical flight company has the right contacts in place and is experienced with organizing medical flights from start to finish. A knowledgeable case manager is assigned to the patient, and a doctor of the medical transport company will review the patient’s medical records and discuss the plan with the doctor who is treating the patient.
The medical flight company will ensure that oxygen and medical equipment are available for the flight and coordinate with ambulance companies, hospitals, and airlines. The medical staff sent to pick up the patient is licensed and specially trained to take responsibility for the patient until the final destination is reached and care is transferred to someone else.
Because aeromedical staff are usually experienced travelers, they also tend to be very helpful as travel companions. When changing planes at a stopover, they can handle travel-related tasks like luggage collection, customs declarations, and airport navigation.
How much does an international medical flight cost from Canada to an international destination?
A medical flight between Canada and an international destination can cost between $15,000 and $55,000 Canadian. On a commercial flight, with a medical escort, roughly between $45,000 and $90,000 if the patient is transported on an airline stretcher, and between $100,000 and $300,000 if the medical flight is done by air ambulance.
Depending on where the patient is and what distance needs to be bridged to reach home, sometimes a long-range non-emergency medical transfer is possible by road, for example, when a Canadian patient must return from the USA. But whenever it makes more sense to fly because of a long distance or bad road conditions, contracting a medical escort company for a medical flight by commercial airline is always the cheapest option.
Long-distance medical flights, for example, when a patient needs to be transported from Canada to India or from Canada to the Middle East or Africa, can be simply unaffordable on an air ambulance if a family is paying out of pocket. In those cases, a medical flight on a commercial plane can be the only way out.
Plan a medical flight if you need to move an elderly person from one country to another
When an elderly person can’t live alone anymore and becomes care-dependent, families start looking for a suitable care home closer to immediate family or relatives who can help when needed. Today’s reality is that many elderly people live far away from their adult family members, in a different province, cross-border in the States, or overseas. When it’s time to move out and start living closer to family, the long trip ahead can cause a lot of anxiety.
The need to move out and relocate is often because of a new health event that suddenly made the senior more dependent. Other possible reasons include dementia that is gradually getting worse or losing an essential caregiver one way or the other.
Care needs aren’t temporarily paused when an elderly person needs to be moved over a long distance. If a chance is taken, many things can go wrong by assuming everything will naturally go well. The safest approach is to contract an aeromedical company and take control of the transfer by addressing all challenges before they become problematic.
Aeromedical nurses are not only knowledgeable about elderly care needs but also specialize in caring for individuals while they are traveling and on the move in the airport and airplane environment. Especially on international transfers having this combination of knowledge and skills onboard will give you the best chance of a seamless transfer, especially on international transfers.
International medical travel to get medical treatment overseas
Seriously ill people can find themselves in a position where they need advanced, highly specialized medical care that is either not available or unaffordable where they live. Traveling for medical purposes, so-called “medical tourism,” is uncommon for Canadian patients.
The most well-known type of medical tourism is for cosmetic or bariatric reasons. Also, many Canadians travel yearly for orthopedic surgery, dental work, or eye procedures to avoid the long wait times or hefty medical bills when a procedure needs to be covered under the provincial health care plan.
Less known are the patients who are very sick and need advanced cancer treatment or other medical procedures available only at a handful of hospitals elsewhere.
After finding a suitable hospital, the next question becomes…how to get there. People who suffer from weakness or paralyzed limbs or who need uninterrupted supervision and support can hire an aeromedical company to plan a scheduled medical transfer onboard a commercial flight to get to a hospital appointment in another country.
The same applies to patients transferred to specialized long-term care facilities. That can be a care home that focuses on certain groups of people, but it can also be a rehab center for people with a brain injury or a treatment center for eating disorders. There are detox retreats, mental health facilities, and even hospices that accept international patients, provided the patient can arrange a suitable and medically responsible way of being transported first.
What can you do to prepare for a medical flight?
If you know you’ll soon need to request a medical flight, start by collecting medical documents about the patient’s situation. Air medical companies rely on the information you can provide to assess how the patient can be best transported. They’ll not only ask questions but also ask you for medical documents to back up your request. The more objective information you can get from the doctors caring for the patient, the quicker a medical flight can be organized. Relevant information includes:
- The patient’s past medical and surgical history.
- A current problem list.
- The type of care that the patient receives on the ground.
- A list of all medications being given.
- Contact details of the treating physician.
If the patient is admitted to a hospital, a summary of recent events, diagnostic test results, and a discharge letter can be very helpful. If documents are written in a language other than English, it is recommended to have the text translated. It also makes sense to discuss your plans of transporting the patient on a medical flight with the doctors so that they can provide guidance and advice when they expect the patient to be ready for the transfer.
It is also always early enough to start planning financially for a medical flight, especially to an international destination, as it may take some time and effort to allocate the funds.