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Aeroterra Health Welcomes ECU Health as Newest Governing Member
Murray, Utah – October 14, 2026 –Aeroterra HealthSM, a nonprofit business of healthcare and medical transport partners, today announced ECU Health as the organization’s newest governing member, marking an important milestone in its continued growth.
Aeroterra Health was established in November 2025 by six leading nonprofit organizations working collaboratively to address systemic challenges facing the medical transport industry. The organization brings partners together to share resources, strengthen safety, improve financial sustainability, maintain access to critical transport services and advance the field of transport medicine.
As Aeroterra Health’s first new governing member to join the founding members, ECU Health will add the experience and perspective of a longtime critical care transport program serving rural eastern North Carolina. ECU Health’s EastCare program provides critical care air and ground transportation throughout eastern North Carolina. The program has served its communities since 1985 and is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems.
“Joining Aeroterra Health gives ECU Health an opportunity to work alongside like-minded organizations that share our commitment to providing safe, high-quality care to the communities we serve,” said ECU Health Chief Nursing Executive Trish Baise. “Collaboration allows us to learn from one another, strengthen our industry and create solutions that help ensure patients continue to have access to critical transport services when they need them most.”
Admitting new governing membership provides an avenue for additional aligned organizations to join the member-governed collaborative and help shape its future. ECU Health has appointed Baise, who oversees the EastCare program, to serve as its representative on the Aeroterra Health Board of Directors. ECU Health will have an equal and active voice in the organization’s priorities and strategic direction.
“Welcoming ECU Health as our first new governing member represents exactly the kind of growth we envisioned when we created this organization,” said Chairman of Aeroterra Health Board of Directors Jonathan Collier, who also serves as Vice President of Mobile Medicine for Advocate Health. “The future of transport medicine will be stronger when organizations are willing to share expertise, tackle common challenges together and learn from one another. ECU Health brings decades of experience and a strong commitment to the patients and communities it serves, and we are excited to have their voice at the table.”
Aeroterra Health operates as a collaborative Health Care Utility designed to leverage the collective scale, expertise and resources of its members. Its founding organizations are Advocate Health, Flight For Life Wisconsin, HealthNet Aeromedical Services, Intermountain Health, MedFlight of Ohio and Vanderbilt Health Medical Center.
“The addition of ECU Health is an exciting step forward for Aeroterra Health and demonstrates the value of bringing nonprofit transport medicine organizations together around common goals,” said Brian Doughty, who serves as Aeroterra Health’s Responsible Executive and Executive Vice President and CFO of HealthNet Aeromedical Services. “Every new perspective strengthens our ability to identify meaningful opportunities for collaboration, responsible stewardship and continuous improvement. Ultimately, our work together is about building a stronger, more sustainable environment for medical transport and the patients who depend on it.”
About Aeroterra HealthSM
Aeroterra HealthSM is a nonprofit business of healthcare and medical transport partners formed in 2025 and focused on safety, responsible stewardship and continuous improvement. Created as a member-governed Health Care Utility with guidance from the Mindshare Institute, Aeroterra Health brings organizations together to share resources and address systemic challenges facing the medical transport industry. Visit www.aeroterrahealth.org to learn more.
About ECU Health
ECU Health is a mission-driven, 1,708-bed academic health care system serving more than 1.4 million people in 29 eastern North Carolina counties. The not-for-profit system is comprised of more than 15,000 team members, nine hospitals, a children’s hospital and a physician group that encompasses over 1,200 academic and community providers practicing in over 220 primary and specialty clinics located in more than 120 locations. The flagship ECU Health Medical Center and ECU Health’s Maynard Children’s Hospital – both Level I Trauma Centers – serve as the primary teaching hospitals for the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. ECU Health and the Brody School of Medicine share a combined academic mission to improve the health and well-being of eastern North Carolina through patient care, education and research. For more information, visit www.ECUHealth.org.
Contact:
Brian Doughty
Responsible Executive – Aeroterra Health
brian.doughty@aeroterrahealth.org
New Health Care Utility Set to Transform Transport Medicine
Murray, Utah — Nov. 18, 2025 — Five leading nonprofit organizations are joining forces to improve medical transport in the respective areas they serve across the country.
Advocate Health, Flight For Life Wisconsin, HealthNet Aeromedical Services, Intermountain Health, and MedFlight of Ohio, all collaborating with the Mindshare Institute, have created a new, nonprofit transport medicine Health Care Utility known as Aeroterra Health. The utility will leverage its collective size and strength to share resources aimed at solving longstanding, systemic problems in the medical transport industry, while reducing the cost of related products and services.
This alliance will enhance united action among nonprofit medical transport providers, resulting in greater safety, financial sustainability for the market, continued access, and the health and advancement of transport medicine. As a member-governed business, Aeroterra Health will empower participating organizations to shape the future of medical transport through shared authority, transparency, and complementary values.
“Collaboration across the medical transport industry is essential,” said Clinton V. Burley, President and CEO of HealthNet Aeromedical Services. “By joining forces with like-minded programs, we can maximize safety, reduce operating costs, maintain access, and further advance our field. We are excited to work together as partner organizations to build a stronger, more sustainable future for medical transport.”
The Mindshare Institute, a recently launched nonprofit focused on creating Health Care Utilities (HCUs) to structurally transform healthcare, is guiding the formation of Aeroterra Health, the first of many Mindshare-initiated utilities.
Aeroterra Health will invite other aligned medical transport programs, health systems, and strategic partners to join in the mission of advancing safety and sustainability in transport medicine, a critical part of the U.S. healthcare ecosystem.
Contact
Jonathan Collier
Executive Chairman – Aeroterra Health Email: jonathan.collier@advocatehealth.org
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For Immediate Release
Feature Article
MedFlight: An Ohio Model Shaped by Change and Innovation
Todd D. Bailey, MBA, CMTE *
MedFlight, Columbus, OH
Making History: One of Many Firsts –
“The advent of this program brought along with it a long-standing
history of innovation. One of the program’s premerger firsts was in
1986 when LifeFlight (the original OhioHealth Grant Medical Center’s
program name) established the first US hospital-owned and -sponsored remote medical helicopter base in the country. It was the first
time a hospital-based program moved the helicopter from the receiving facility to a remote location in the service area. The concept
revolved around the idea of being where the patients are coming
from not where patients are going. That historic base (MedFlight #3)
continues to serve the same rural region of Ohio as a testament to
responsible service for those patients and their caregivers in need.
When MedFlight was created in 1995, along with being innovative, the main goal was to place accessible transportation options in
rural areas where many of the patients at the time resided but had
limited access or long transport times to urban trauma centers…”
For the full article visit https://www.airmedicaljournal.com/article/S1067-991X(21)00244-3/pdf
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 30, 2019
For information, contact:
Todd Bailey, MBC, CMTE, Vice President of Development
MedFlight
tbailey@medflight.com
(614) 580-9081
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The following is in regard to media questions posed to MedFlight related to the medical helicopter accident on Tuesday, January 29th, 2019 in Vinton County, Ohio.
According to Tom Allenstein, MedFlight President and CEO, “Yesterday, a tragic accident occurred involving our air medical colleagues at Survival Flight. Our hearts and prayers go out to the team members who lost their lives as well as their families and friends. As it relates to MedFlight, we received a request to transport a patient from the Holzer-Meigs Emergency Room in Pomeroy at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 29th. The assigned team’s pilot, working with the Operational Control Center at Metro Aviation, Inc., our aviation operator, determined that weather conditions at the time of the request were below our program’s weather minimums. Each helicopter ambulance service has their own protocols for making decisions about whether it is appropriate to fly under given conditions. The results of the NTSB investigation is pending as it relates to the cause of this accident.”
Regarding this incident, please do not contact MedFlight’s Communications Center.
MedFlight is a not-for-profit, CAMTS-accredited air & ground critical care transportation company formed in 1995. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, MedFlight has 9 Helicopter bases and 3 Mobile ICU bases statewide.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COLUMBUS, Ohio – At approximately 6:45pm on Sunday 2/4/17, while enroute to a referring facility to begin a patient transport, MedFlight’s Columbus-based Mobile ICU team was involved in an accident with injuries to the medical crew. First responders transported the team to the local hospital for assessment.
We will keep you updated as details are available. Please do not call our emergency dispatch number at this time.
We thank you for your support and patience as we assist our team during this incident.
UPDATE 02/04/18 @ 2308
We have confirmed that one of the crew involved in the accident has been transported with serious injuries to a Columbus hospital for treatment. Remaining crew members sustained minor injuries and are being evaluated at this time.
MedFlight Receives Top Industry Award as Program of the Year
COLUMBUS, Ohio – MedFlight, the non-profit critical care transportation company owned by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and OhioHealth, was awarded the prestigious award of Program of the Year last night in Nashville, Tennessee at the annual Air Medical Transportation Conference by AAMS (Association of Air Medical Services).
The Program of the Year Award recognizes an emergency medical program that has demonstrated a superior level of patient care, management prowess, quality leadership through visionary and innovative approaches, customer and community service, safety practice and commitment to the medical transport community
Throughout MedFlight’s history it has demonstrated patients-first values and leadership by providing medical helicopter and mobile intensive care unit (MICU) patient transportation solutions. MedFlight was recognized for its exemplary safety standards by receiving the Vision Zero Safety Award in 2012 (the highest industry safety award) and continues a lasting contribution to the industry today.
MedFlight demonstrated its commitment to outreach education, through lectures and the use of our mobile simulation RV by providing thousands of free CEUs to members of the EMS communities and hospitals throughout Ohio. Firehouse Subs recognized MedFlight’s effort by granting the largest grant to date so MedFlight could purchase a pediatric simulator to further educate providers in Ohio.
MedFlight’s social media program is successfully used to provide education, industry related information, and safety training. Their Facebook page is one of the largest industry sites with over 13,000 fans in 10 countries. Most recently, MedFlight started MedFlight Radio, which provides podcasts on relevant topics and provides CEU education. To date MedFlight Radio has over 8400 downloads in 41 countries.
MedFlight saw the need for collaborative research in the industry and founded the Center for Medical Transport Research to fill this void. This provided an opportunity for people to share their own story of safety with over 30 digital safety stories published.
MedFlight and our partners have also contributed nationally and internationally through service to disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.
They recently helped coordinate and participate in the fundraising for “The Great American Safety Drive” that raised over $100K for the MedEvac Foundation.
This award was made possible by its employees, aviation personnel from their vendor Metro Aviation, sponsoring hospitals, and other stakeholders that have worked for decades to serve and improve the lives of others. MedFlight is honored and humbled to receive this prestigious award.
For more information go to www.medflight.com
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