AAMS replies to criticism of HEMS regulations

The Association of Air Medical Services (AAMS) has responded to an article written last month that criticised HEMS regulation in the US.

The original article written by Mark Huber, titled Medicare Can Actually Push HEMS to Rationality and published in News on the Fly, argued that ‘the hospital air ambulance industry in the US is currently unsustainable’. Huber claimed that ‘too many helicopters’ are flying ‘too few hours, charging patients what they like’ and argued that the blame for this came down to the federal Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) which, according to the Huber, is legislation that ‘was never intended to govern the air ambulance industry but has been misapplied by the Department of Transportation’.

AAMS has countered that this statement is an opinion and ‘is not based on actual fact’. It added: “Air ambulances are not airlines but they must meet all Federal regulatory, safety, operating, equipment, maintenance, and other requirements specified by the FAA for all on-demand air carriers, which is exactly what the ADA was intended to address.”

The association also countered Huber’s opinion that the ADA protections and Medicare payments allow providers to give low quality service. AAMS listed many of the checks it says are performed on aircraft to provide a good quality service. It then asked Huber if he could cite any specific examples, adding: “[AAMS] imagines the FAA (not to mention legions of trail attorneys) would be interested in hearing them.”

Another criticism that AAMS took with was Huber’s assertion that tighter regulations should be in place around ‘required speeds of loading and offloading, minimum size of patients to be accommodated and types of procedures performed in the air ambulance’.

AAMS responded by saying: “It is critical that patients be moved, loaded, and unloaded safely and correctly, rather than quickly. [AAMS] would prefer that clinicians use their advance skills and judgement to load and unload patients as efficiently as possible and not feel pressured to rush through important safety measures or to ‘push, pull, or squeeze’ them into an aircraft in order to beat the clock and meet an artificial time deadline.”

It ended the rebuttal by asserting that ‘we cannot let competitiveness and hyperbole distract us from our industry’s overarching goals’.