Editorial: State needs to provider better regulation of air ambulance services – Salt Lake Tribune

So it’s notably troublesome to learn in Sunday’s Salt Lake Tribune that the rising quantity of air ambulance services in Utah are discovering methods to take flight, and ship payments, with out the type of oversight that ought to be taken as a right.

Those working the upstart helicopter services declare that the relative dearth of state oversight is the suitable method to present what they are saying is required competitors for the 2 operations that beforehand cornered the market on air ambulance services in Utah — the University of Utah’s AirMed and Intermountain Healthcare’s Life Flight.

Pressure from the newcomers has been so profitable that they’ve successfully created their very own regulatory physique, one which has far much less means, in phrases of authority and assets, to oversee the operations than did the now-defunct arm of the Utah Department of Health.

There is a wealthy, and troubling, irony that the operators of the brand new for-revenue air ambulance services have been allowed to store for their very own regulatory construction whereas their clients haven’t any capability to select their very own EMS provider.

The state of affairs raises critical concerns over the safety and high quality of the airborne operations. Meanwhile, some of the sufferers who’ve been airlifted by the brand new ambulances have been caught with payments upwards of $80,000, some 10 occasions the going fee coated by medical insurance carriers.

If this have been a case of somebody willingly strolling into a brand new automotive showroom and foolishly shopping for an $80,000 automotive that they could not afford, that might be too dangerous. But when the individual caught with such a invoice was positioned within the state of affairs by a system that gives the client no selection, the necessity for some actual authorities oversight turns into clear.

Federal law precludes state regulation of air services, however not of well being-care suppliers. Utah officers have been incorrect to capitulate to legal and political threats from the for-revenue air ambulance operators. A brand new routine of regulation for these services is important. Stat.

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