Medical Transportation: What Are The Best Options?
Every day all over the world people are in need of medical assistance. Doctors and caregivers work relentlessly to both save and improve lives. Often though, the unsung heroes of the hour are the teams of people who run the medical transportation services. These are the people who quite literally stand in the divide between life and death.
But which form of this crucial transportation is considered “the best”?
Ambulance
Most people are familiar with ambulances. They can be seen in countries around the world, answering emergency calls and transporting those in need to the nearest hospital or medical centers quite literally from one bedside to another.
The paramedics on an ambulance are trained to help people both at the scene and during transportation. It is the combination of the dedicated teams and extensive training that saves countless lives every day. In short, the ambulance is the number one way to move a patient by road in an emergency.
Air ambulance
The reason these are used is often to take people to a hospital that is further away, maybe hundreds of miles away or even in another country in the case of international medical evacuations. Much the same as the other form of ambulance, there will be paramedics on board who make it their concern to do everything they can to make their patients comfortable and ready to receive the necessary treatment at the other end of the journey.
These special ambulances also come in handy for the daredevils who place themselves in tricky situations up the side of mountains and other unobtainable places throughout the world!
Non-emergency transport
Now not every patient needs urgent assistance thank goodness. However, there are patients who need to get to a medical center or hospital for an appointment but who are not able to use the normal methods of transport due to an ongoing medical condition (blindness for example).
In cases such as these, patients are not simply left to “work things out on their own”. There are commercial and non-profit groups who arrange transport for such patients. In a sense, they are like a taxi service for those who are not able to help themselves. Again this is a door-to-door service, like the ambulance, but frees up limited resources to assist those who have an emergency.
Commercial airline grants
Some people may not know that there are grants that allow commercial airline carriers, which are responsible for taking people on holiday, to offer free tickets to those who need medical assistance and their caregivers. Now, this may seem like a good way to get a cheap holiday, but as would be expected; not everyone would be eligible.
The grants are given to hospitals which operate in a non-profit way and who may not be otherwise able to afford such transportation. Each hospital that is selected for such a grant then chooses how to administer the airline tickets. This is a hugely popular idea which has been welcomed by many hospitals and charitable organizations for the great work it does in ensuring people get the medical help they need, no matter what their bank balance says.
So there it is. There are many different types of transport to and from hospitals around the world. Each one has its own little niche where it stands out from the others in specific situations. Realistically there is no “best” option as they all do outstanding work and the world would be a much worse place if any one of these vital modes of transport were to disappear.
