Expanded coverage

County adds medical transport to insurance

The Union County Quorum Court’s Public Service Committee met last week to discuss adding a new health insurance benefit for county employees.

Union County Judge Mike Loftin told members of the committee that he’d recently been approached by Survival Flight, a new air ambulance service with a base at the Medical Center of South Arkansas, about adding a new benefit to county employees’ health insurance coverage.

“We have needed a helicopter service here for some time,” Loftin said. “The other part of that would be that we’re supporting this new business here to try to keep it here.”

Survival Flight began providing their service to Union County residents on Feb. 28; by March 12, the local crew had already flown 11 people to either the nearest hospital, or, in the case of patient transfers, to the hospital the patient’s physician referred them to.

Loftin provided the committee with a letter from Survival Flight outlining the company’s competitive services. The letter says the company is currently placing only Bell 407 helicopters in communities they serve, specifying that the model is larger, has a higher weight capacity and a higher flight speed than what most medevac companies offer. The letter also notes that the helicopters are equipped with state of the art emergency medical service (EMS) equipment.

Loftin said Survival Flight offered him a group insurance rate of $40 per employee to insure all 144 county employees currently receiving health care benefits. The coverage will apply to an employees’ family. Altogether, it would cost the county only $5,760 to provide the coverage.

“I thought it was a good added benefit with no cost to the employees,” District 6 JP and Committee chairman Cecil Polk said.

District 10 JP Donald Brock said when his brother had to be med-evaced 10 years ago, his bill was around $18,000 just for the air ambulance service. According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the average cost for an air ambulance flight is between $12,000 and $25,000 per flight. The median cost to the air ambulance providers per flight was $10,000 in 2019, according to the Association of Air Medical Services.

Loftin noted that an air ambulance service, Air Evac Lifeteam, previously had a base in Camden; the company closed that base in 2014, after only six years of operations.

“I’m good for it,” Polk said.

“I like it.”

Polk noted that committee member and District 5 JP Carolyn Jones, who was not in attendance at the meeting, had expressed her approval for the new benefit to him. The committee decided unanimously to add air ambulance coverage from Survival Flight to county employees’ health insurance benefits. Because the funds will be drawn from the insurance budget, the additional benefit did not need full Quorum Court approval, Polk and District 3 JP Greg Harrison said.

The new benefit may come as a relief to county employees, who learned last week that a pay raise scheduled to go into effect today would be postponed in light of a projected loss in revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic and depressed sales tax collections.

To learn more about Survival Flight, visit survivalflightinc.com or themedcenter.net/ emergency-department.

Caitlan Butler can be reached at 870-862-6611 or cbutler@eldoradonews.com.