Out-Of-State Mailings Cause Confusion

An out-of-state air ambulance program recently targeted north central Missouri residents with a direct mailer advertising its membership program, however, EagleMed LLC’s closest medical helicopter is more than 200 miles away from some of the families it seeks to enroll.
“We’re concerned because of the confusion this has caused some of our members and others in the community who received the mailer and could mistake EagleMed for LifeFlight Eagle,” said Matt Daugherty, a spokesperson for LifeFlight Eagle, which serves the community from a base in Trenton. “We don’t want anyone to sign up for a membership with a company that doesn’t serve their communities.”
EagleMed is a for-profit air-medical company headquartered in Wichita, KS and part of a national conglomerate. It has 14 bases in Kansas and Oklahoma, and a handful of bases in other states, including bases in Joplin and Poplar Bluff. However, its closest helicopters to North-Central Missouri are in Pittsburg and Chanute, KS, in the southeast part of the state.
LifeFlight Eagle, which serves communities in Missouri and eastern Kansas, is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. In addition to its base in Trenton, LifeFlight Eagle has bases in Odessa, Harrisonville and Clinton as well as a helicopter dedicated to the Children’s Mercy Critical Care Transport Team based in Kansas City. Its administrative offices are also located in Kansas City.
“We’ve received a lot of calls from people in the community wanting to know if LifeFlight Eagle and EagleMed are the same,” Daugherty said. “We have no affiliation with them.”
Many helicopter ambulance programs offer memberships that help patients avoid the out-of-pocket costs of air-medical transport.
“Our membership program is great for the community because our members don’t pay a dime out of pocket if they become critically ill or injured and have to be flown on any of our five helicopters,” Daugherty said. “A $59 annual membership protects everyone in your household.”
“It is also an important source of revenue for us as a non-profit organization,” Daugherty added. “It’s part of what allows us to reinvest in the communities we serve. We provide hundreds of hours of continuing education to community hospital staffs, firefighters, EMTs and paramedics in rural communities. We also do dozens of safety courses and community education events every year. We’re able to do that in part because of our membership program and the generosity of donors in the community.”
Daugherty said that an EagleMed membership wouldn’t provide any benefit to patients if they were flown by LifeFlight Eagle.
“They would owe all the charges that their health insurance or Medicare don’t cover and that can be tens of thousands of dollars,” Daugherty said. “We just want to make sure people are careful and know who they’re signing up with before they write their check. We don’t want anyone to mistakenly think their family is protected by a LifeFlight Eagle membership when they’re not.”