Air ambulances – saving lives yet relying on charitable funding; why?
Anybody who has experience of their service, either themselves, through a loved one or a client, will appreciate the vital role that air ambulances and their crews play.
By bringing specialist medical expertise quickly to the scene and transporting the seriously injured to hospital, often from remote areas or bypassing traffic-jammed roads, air ambulances have saved thousands of lives and improved outcomes for countless others.
According to Air Ambulances UK, the UK’s 21 air ambulance charities together made more than 45,000 missions in 2023 alone, at an average cost of over £4,000 per mission, with an average response time to arrive on scene of just 16 minutes. They are an integral part of rapid response by emergency services across the country. The North-West Air Ambulance alone carried out more than 3,000 missions in 2023 and states that it has to raise more than £12m a year to stay operational.
Given the life-saving work that they do, many might find it surprising that air ambulances are reliant primarily on charitable donations. One might imagine air ambulance services to be an extension of those provided by road ambulances and the NHS itself, which nobody would expect to have to raise their own funds. Yet air ambulances are almost entirely reliant on the public’s charity to meet their costs.
Surely the services themselves would prefer, one might suppose, to be funded fully by the government and not be reliant on charity.
The notion of state funding for air ambulances is certainly one that attracts some public support. A petition in 2019 for air ambulances to be fully funded by the government garnered over 134,000 signatures in favour of the proposal.
The air ambulance charities themselves however value their independence, enabling them to work in medical partnership with the NHS while remaining independent in their income generation and decision making.
The Wales Air Ambulance Charity, for example, says:
“This independence, outside of the pressures and constraints of public sector funding, allows the Charity to focus on its core services, continually monitor and effectively adapt to the critical care needs of Wales in a timely manner, while maintaining a consistently high standard of care.”
Similarly, in the Parliamentary debate in 2021 on the above petition, several chief executives of air ambulance charities were quoted as speaking of the benefits of being able to provide a flexible, tailored service to their regions.
Ahead of this year’s General Election, Air Ambulances UK called for the next government to support the air ambulance community in the form of UK-wide grants and capital funding for infrastructure, as well as improved provision of helipads at Major Trauma Centres. Furthermore, medical staff seconded from local NHS Trusts play a central role to the operation of the services. But fundamentally, the charities prefer to remain operationally and financially independent.
We can all agree that these charities deserve our thanks and support, during Air Ambulance Week and beyond.
