To earn CAMTS accreditation – essentially, the industry’s gold standard – a service must demonstrate compliance to strict standards involving quality of medical care, equipment maintenance, communications and safety, along with passing a comprehensive, on-site inspection. Only 165 medical transport services in the world have earned CAMTS accreditation. CAMTS is an organization of nonprofit agencies dedicated to improving the quality and safety of medical transport services.
“AMR Air Hawaii is proud to have accomplished our ambitious goal of earning CAMTS accreditation within our first year of providing fixed-wing service,” said Speedy Bailey, general manager of AMR’s air and ground operations in Hawaii. “This accomplishment reinforces AMR’s 30-plus year commitment to provide quality care to the residents of Hawaii.”
AMR Air Hawaii transports patients inter-island. The agency’s medical teams meet patients at their bedsides and then transport them by AMR ground ambulance to a waiting aircraft. Advanced life support care continues in flight and until the patient is comfortably situated in bed at his destination hospital.
AMR Air Hawaii maintains bases on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island. Medical flight crews, which include a registered nurse, a paramedic and two pilots, are stationed together in base houses, enabling rapid responses to patient and hospital needs.
“We pride ourselves on providing superior patient care, and we follow standards that meet or exceed normal FAA requirements, and state and federal regulations,” said Karlson Pung, operations manager of AMR Air Hawaii. “Safety drives our decision-making. Everything is built on safety.”
For example, state and federal regulations require only one pilot in the cockpit for medical transports, but “with two pilots, AMR and our patients benefit by having two sets of eyes, two people up there making aviation decisions,” said Pung.
AMR serves Hawaii’s four counties and the islands of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Maui and the Big Island with 50 ambulances, 32 ambulance stations and one rotor-wing ambulance, in addition to AMR Air Hawaii’s three fixed-wing aircraft. The service employs more than 200 health care professionals across the state.
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Note to Editor:
Courtesy photos of AMR Air Hawaii aircraft are available on request. For more information or to schedule a time to get your own photos, please contact Karlson Pung at (808) 961-9677 or
Karlson.Pung@amr.net.
About American Medical Response
American Medical Response, Inc. (
www.amr.net), America’s leading provider of medical transportation, provides services in 40 states and the District of Columbia. More than 18,000 AMR paramedics, EMTs, RNs and other professionals work together to transport more than 3 million patients nationwide each year in critical, emergency and non-emergency situations. AMR, a subsidiary of Envision Healthcare Corporation, is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colo.