HISTORY

MedFlight was established in April of 1995. MedFlight is made possible by our consortium hospitals including Grant/Riverside Methodist Hospitals (OhioHealth), The Ohio State University Medical Center and Akron General Medical Center. MedFlight also has partnerships with other hospitals including Nationwide Children’s Hospital and other pediatric centers of excellence.

A Revolutionary Network...

In 1994, Columbus based Grant Medical Center and Ohio State University Hospitals announced plans to consolidate LifeFlight and SkyMed, the hospitals’ rotor wing transport services, into a new entity called MedFlight. At that time, both hospitals worked to create a separate company, keeping in mind that the consolidation would save millions of healthcare dollars annually by eliminating duplication and simplifying access to emergency transportation, while maintaining high-quality care.

MedFlight is currently the only critical care transportation organization in the state that offers a network of owned and operated critical care ground and diversified air transportation services with ancillary bases.

MedFlight president and CEO Rod Crane says the service is doing better than anyone thought ten years ago. “The sponsoring hospitals originally estimated cost savings of around $500,000 to $1.5 million in the first year of operation, Crane says. They planned to subsidize us with $1.2 million the first year, and a second year subsidy of half that amount. By the third year, projections called for the company to be self-supporting. In short, the owner hospitals had departed from the traditional hospital owned model to create a lean, mean, critical care machine that would be prepared for the challenges of the new millennium.”

“We exceeded the projection by 18 months,“ Crane says. “The Board of Directors has been pleased, and the community that we served.” Indeed, the board has much to be pleased about.  Neither Grant/Riverside nor The Ohio State University Medical Center is incurring losses anymore regarding these services.  MedFlight’s first-year loss was only $766,244, more than $400,000 less than expected.

After two years of operation, the company was solvent.  The surplus from that year and the most recent years are being invested back into the service as MedFlight expands.

Making History...

In just four short years after it’s inception as a private not-for-profit company in 1995, MedFlight offered Ohio the only complete menu of solely owned and operated critical care transport options for pre-hospital and hospital partners throughout its service area.

In the first ten years, the company successfully based six full-time medical helicopters at six ancillary locations in Ohio . These helicopters and their crews successfully completed over 4,000 patient transports throughout Ohio and neighboring states in 2005 alone.

Beginning in 1997, the company added Mobile Intensive Care Units (MICU) at different locations in Ohio, which are utilized for inter-hospital transport. The MICU Division completed approximately 4,000 transports in 2005.

A New Frontier...

MedFlight’s regional network includes rotor wing bases in eight different counties (Franklin, Union, Jackson, Coshocton, Medina, Morgan, Tuscarawas, and Scioto counties), MICU bases in four counties (Franklin, Marion, Wayne and Cuyahoga counties).  MedFlight completes nearly 7,000 patient transports each year.

Our safety standards and patient care quality are a true reflection of the values we strive to offer our customers and friends in the hospital, pre-hospital, and law enforcement community.  The community knows the value of what we strive to do and rewards us by calling back.

In addition to providing the highest level of critical care patient transportation, MedFlight continually offers educational initiatives to EMS, hospitals, and associations throughout the region, including one of the nation's only mobile METI human patient simulators.  This enhances critical care transportation services because MedFlight is able to integrate outreach education and MICU and rotor wing operations into one organization focused on patients.

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