We've all been held up on the motorway at some
point by a smash where the Air Ambulance has had to attend. In general, I think
we all appreciate their existence, and are re-assured that they’re there for us
if we need whipping off to hospital quickly in a life threatening condition. Statistics
show that one air ambulance takes off somewhere in Britain every 10 minutes
during daylight hours, and continue to do so without most of us knowing very
much at all about how they operate or who pays for them.
What a lot of people aren't aware of is that like
the RNLI and Mountain Rescue; this wonderful service isn't state funded but
funded by charitable donations to each unit. My initial reaction to this was “Whoa! - Why is a life-saving service not
provided for by the state yet the likes of Police helicopters are?” But
then I started to think about it and began to realise maybe it is better kept
away from the state. To arrive at this conclusion I needed to do some digging
and came up with quite a few facts.
The Facts
Historically, over the last 20 or so years, air
ambulances have been set up across the country with no overall planning, no
agreed funding and no clear, bespoke system of regulation. As a result, there
is an imbalanced patchwork of services, heavily skewed towards southern
England, all relying to a major degree on charitable donations.
According to Wikipedia, there are twenty-seven air
ambulance services in the United Kingdom using either helicopters or fixed-wing
aircraft. Thirty-six helicopters operated by commercial companies and funded by
charitable organisations, cover England and Wales. Scotland however is different;
they have two helicopters and two planes operated by the Scottish Ambulance
Service, whose air wing is the only publicly funded air ambulance in the UK.
Rather like hospices, which on average get a third
of their income from the government, air ambulances have developed alongside
the NHS, but are complementary to it. We are talking here primarily about
"Hems", helicopter emergency medical services, which airlift
casualties to hospital. However, the precise role of the individual services
varies widely. London's Air Ambulance responds only to major trauma incidents,
whereas other services will fly to "retrieve" people who have suffered
heart attacks or broken bones and will undertake inter-hospital transfer. Most
carry only a paramedic, but the London service always has a doctor too. In
2013, the solitary London Air ambulance attended 1,819 “Patient Missions”,
that’s five a day on average.
The charities/air ambulances are represented by two
umbrella organisations, the Association of Air Ambulances and the Air Ambulance
Service (AAS). The AAS's extensive fundraising – it has over 30 charity shops -
means that it pays for everything it does. From the moment it is called on by
ambulance control, it says, no cost falls on the NHS. Most other charities rely
on paramedics provided by the local ambulance services with which they work, or
get all their drugs and equipment from them, while some simply fundraise to
lease a helicopter for the NHS.
Indirect
Subsidy
London's Air Ambulance, which in the past has had
sponsorship from Express Newspapers and Virgin, had 18 personnel seconded from
the NHS in 2011-12 at a value of more than £1.2m. In addition, the charity
received an NHS grant of almost as much again, representing more than a third
of its cash income. This appears true of other air ambulances so they’re not
entirely charity funded even if it is through an indirect route. From what I
can tell therefore, The Department of Health do pay for the clinical staff on
the helicopters but not for the pilots or the running costs, this is what the
charity side pays for.
Should it be
State funded?
My initial reaction to this question was ‘Yes’
however, thinking about it more, they’re a well-oiled money raising operation
as it stands. With so many people voluntarily giving their money to an
organisation like the Air Ambulances, why would the Government replace that
funding with a tax to fund them?
The other side is, if they were government funded, they
would come under the same austerity measures as the rest of the emergency
services, we would be talking about which units are going to close down whilst
ministers would be standing up saying that response times would not suffer
during the cuts!
At the moment, even with charity money showing a
tendency to slow, the UK air ambulances are in a pretty good shape and appear to
have survived the downturn looking like they should hopefully come out the other
side without cuts, which is more than the likes of the Fire Services can say.
In general, (depending on how many helicopters are
operated) each air ambulance service needs £2.5m - £5.0m funding a year through
charity. This equates to around a £100m nationally and they seem to be achieving
it. Bringing this into state funding would see that £100m come out of the NHS
budget thus causing more cuts in direct service as the money is diverted away
from the Trusts. Therefore it seems eminently sensible that as long as people
are donating and the service isn't failing then it should remain outside of the
government’s clutches.
North West
Air Ambulance
I couldn't write this piece without giving a push
for my local air ambulance.
The North-west Air Ambulance which has been flying
life-saving missions throughout the region since 1999. They operate three
helicopters flying seven days a week, 365 days a year from bases at Royal
Preston Hospital and Wythenshawe Hospital; they cover 5,500 square miles and a
population of around eight million people. On average the North West Air
Ambulance is called out five times a day, rising up to ten in the summer. It
costs in excess of £4.2 million per year to maintain both aircraft, but with
almost no central government or lottery funding, they rely on the generosity of
donors. If you want to donate, you can do it here - https://nwaa.net/donate
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