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Kristen Ware, AirMedCare Network Membership Sales Manager, spoke to members of The Manchester Rotary about the state of rural healthcare in the region during its March 28 meeting at The Mercantile in Manchester.

AirMedCare Network is an air medical membership network which provides financial coverage for emergency air medical transport.

“Your membership is going to cover whatever your insurance doesn’t, and it will protect you in instances where insurance decides they don’t want to pay it at all,” she said.

Ware said instances where insurance companies have been declining to pay for air medical transport have been consistently rising during recent years.

As of October insurance companies are declining to cover the cost of air medical transports 75% of the time, Ware said.

“In less than six years that went from 20% to 75% of the time,” she said.

Ware said issues began to arise around the time The Affordable Care Act was implemented in 2010.

“Go back a little bit to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and what started happening, you started to see your rates sky rocket, you are carrying some high deductible so you could afford your premium,” Ware said. “It was also the same time period that you saw all these local hospitals across the country begin to close their doors.”

Ware said by 2019 the state of Tennessee had lost 12 rural hospitals. That number increased to 19 by the end of 2020.

“Why is it like that, because insurance doesn’t pay,” she said. “All these little hospitals without funds coming in they either close their doors or there was a decline in the type of care they could provide which left a patient more likely to fly.”

Ware said a major issue facing rural areas is a lack of ground coverage for emergency situations, meaning not enough paramedics and EMTS.

Ware said it is not uncommon for rural communities in to have only two ambulances, and with only two ambulances, they are using those to respond to emergency situations, not for medical transports.

“People think that when they call 9-1-1 someone is coming to get them right away…but that is not the case anymore,” she said. “We are flying all the stuff now because you don’t have ground available to you that isn’t necessarily medically necessary and that is the term in your insurance that is going to determine whether or not they are going to pay for it.”

For more information about AirMedCare Network, visit www.airmedcarenetwork.com.