Medical Angels take Flight

Shrinking the World in Times of Critical Need

By Jay Winchester

Many people love to travel, and justifiably so. There are so many interesting places to go and unusual sites to see. An added plus is that today’s travelers take advantage of a wide array of services and products all designed to make travel affordable, maximize personal convenience when on the road, and at the same time, minimize disruptions to those well-planned itineraries. Added together, these things have made the world a much smaller place than ever before, making travel immensely enjoyable.

Unless you are sick. Then your home, your family doctor and your neighborhood hospital can seem a world away. That’s where Air Ambulance Worldwide steps in. AAWW is a Clearwater-based company specializing in the transfer of patients by air from hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and residences to similar types of facilities. “We do this on an emergent and non-emergent basis,” says Mark Jones, the company’s president. “Our services are offered worldwide and we have literally been to almost every country on the globe.”

The company offers three distinct services: Air Ambulance service via private aircraft, which is reserved for long haul situations (from 150 miles away to anywhere in the world); Commercial Medical Escort services, also offered worldwide, wherein one of the company’s medical personnel meets the patient at a specified location and travels with the patient via commercial airline to their destination (typically either back home or to a different medical facility); and Commercial Stretcher, which is similar to the Medical Escort service but involves removing six to eight seats from coach in order to accommodate travel for a stretcher-bound patient.

In every offering, AAWW staff assist in performing or coordinating all required tasks and paperwork for each specific patient situation. Some of these efforts involve performing medical assessments prior to travel, arranging ground transportation at destinations, coordinating travel and transfer between international departure and arrival points, coordinating with airline medical desks and offering in-flight comfort and assistance to the patients as required. If one thinks of the people involved in delivering excellent medical care as “angels,” then the team at AAWW has earned their wings and makes effective use of them daily.

While air ambulance aircraft vary by size and type, a fleet can include helicopters for short distance service hops, and fixed wing aircraft such as Lear Jets, Citations Jets, turbo prop and twin engine piston planes that are equipped to handle most any distance or situation. On the interior, aircraft are equipped with special stretcher systems, oxygen, compressed air, suction, electricity that powers an array of medical equipment, IV pumps, blood pressure monitors, cardiac monitors and defibrillators and more.

While the planes and equipment in use might not vary much from company to company there is a key differentiator that helps set AAWW apart from the competition. And ironically, it’s the same thing that helps differentiate one commercial airline from another: the personal touch. “What makes us different isn’t the planes, the equipment, or the medications,” Jones says. “It’s our people and our commitment to fulfilling the patient’s and family’s needs. From the very beginning of our inquiry process, we are continually identifying all special requirements of the patient and then we try to bring as many family members into our communication and transfer process as we can. We are not always the least expensive company that our client talks to, but it is very common for them to tell our Flight Coordinators that they went with us because of how thorough and detailed we are.”

This level of detail and thoroughness is essential in Jones’ mind, simply because the principles that make flight possible and that make medial care effective require the same basic ingredient: exactness. “This is a business of precision,” he agrees. “Not just with the pilots, aircraft and medical personnel, but also in the education process that we take the clients through. Most people utilize a service like ours once in a lifetime, and don’t know what questions to ask. Additionally, they are suffering from tremendous personal stress when they call us. Our goal is to remove as much of the stress as we can so that they can make a sensible and informed decision.”

One way in which the company accomplishes this is by ensuring that someone is always available. “We have one very simple policy,” says Jones. “We are a 24/7/365 business that will always answer our telephone with an employee, and will never use an answering service. From the very first hello, we want to give the caller a sense of commitment from us that their loved one will get home safely.” At AAWW, their willingness to accommodate special situations and requests is simply a part of their day-to-day operations.

Of course, the cost of fuel and other essential components of the business and the uneasy political climate in several parts of the world are barriers, but the company finds success by working within these limits. “The rising cost of critical components of our business, such as aircraft maintenance, fuel, insurance, nurse’s pay, and so on, represent obstacles,” he says. “Then there is the pressure to keep our prices low so that we can be competitive in the market. Unfortunately, some companies succumb to the price pressure and then are forced to cut corners on critical areas. We will not do that.”

As for the limitations presented by the geo-political climate, Jones has this to say: “There are a few countries that we cannot go into, but not very many. Some are by choice and some are due to political situations. There are some countries in Africa that are just not safe to fly into and then North Korea is a political problem.”

Also, the service itself does not come cheap. “Air ambulance transfer can be very expensive,” Jones says matter-of-factly. “When you realize that you are flying in a private aircraft, with two pilots, two medical staff and an aircraft that is equipped like a mini emergency room in a hospital, you start to see why it costs so much. We include taking care of everything, including making sure that you and your family doesn’t have to worry about anything. We make arrangements for the ground ambulance in both cities and usually allow one passenger to go along at no charge.”

There are, however, ways to cut costs in air ambulance services, including one that can save thousands of dollars. “Ask any company that you’re considering using if they have a back haul or front haul to your flight needs,” Jones says. “This can potentially save you a lot of money. We look for every opportunity to provide this to our clients. We recently had a situation that serves as a good example. We had a patient going from North America to Mumbai, India. The family was flexible as to when they were able to travel, but needed to go no later than August 17th. We found someone else who needed to come back to North America. When we can establish this “there and back” scenario with multiple clients, then we can utilize our aircraft in both directions. Since the first family had already paid the full price to fly over and back, and we were able to find a back haul for them, both families saved thousands of dollars. In fact, we actually wrote the first family a check as a partial refund of their costs.”

Typically, the company’s clients include travel insurance companies, assistance companies, hospitals, nursing homes, private individuals who find them through the Internet, embassies, military and airline referrals. Business has been good, enabling the five-year-old company, which operates out of three locations to grow at a healthy rate. “The first year, we worked hard and transferred approximately 100 patients, and were blessed to generate seven-figure revenues,” Jones says humbly. “In the second year, we grew in excess of 200%. The third year saw another big leap of 123%, with year number four duplicating that. In this, our fifth year, we should grow about 15%. At this time, we are making sure that we don’t grow too large too fast, so that we keep the quality of our service where it must be.”

The success AAWW enjoys still surprises Jones, a former salesman who started out selling Christmas Cards at 11, and moved eventually into other types of sales, including life insurance, where he became a perennial member of the Million Dollar Roundtable. “When I first started this business, I felt that if I could transfer 4 to 6 patients per month I would be able to maintain a nice small company,” he says, recalling those early days. “After taking about 2 months to set up the company, we transferred our first patient, actually a private person that reached us through the Internet. That first trip was April 9th, 2004, and that year we did about 100 transfers. I could not believe that we were blessed so abundantly in our first year. As we continued to develop our business I regularly would pinch myself because I had to make sure that this was all happening. But over the years I began to realize that when you are fortunate enough to find something to do that utilizes all of your skills and talents that you have developed throughout your life, you have a very good chance of success. Today, we are in our fifth year and I still enjoy getting up and getting into my office to get started helping someone as much as I did the first day.”

Jones credits much of that success to a couple of very important aspects of his life: faith and family. “Fortunately I have a wonderful wife who was 100% supportive of whatever I needed to do,” he says. “She realized that without a total commitment to the building of the business that the chances of success would be slim. There were times that we both questioned what would happen, but we would always lift each other up when we needed it. We would always realize that we had been blessed throughout our entire lives, and that our faith would get us through the beginning of this difficult time.”

The family influence also extends to the day-to-day operations. “Both my daughter and my son work for me,” he says, emphasizing the work part of that phrase. “There is no nepotism here. They realize that they get no special considerations. They are treated no different than any other employee. They are held accountable for every aspect of their position.” His daughter is the Flight Coordinator Manager, overseeing the sales people, while his son has been working on the finance and bookkeeping side of the business. “Next month, he is going to become a Flight Coordinator and report to his sister,” Jones says. “That is going to be interesting.”

Jones offers this tip to Americans traveling the world: “Americans are starting to become aware of travel insurance and how important it can be if it is needed. Travel protection can cover a wide variety of benefits, so you need to make sure that you get the proper coverage. Some coverage will get you home if you are injured or get sick and others will get you to the nearest facility that can take care of you, but not get you all the way back to your home. Also, it is important to get some form of medical benefits included.”

At Air Ambulance Worldwide, these earthbound angels help keep medical care flying high!

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