Fox Flight launches study to improve repatriations
Fox Flight Air Ambulance has announced the start of a ‘comprehensive study’ of the company’s medical data records.
Credit: Fox Flight Air Ambulance
Fox Flight Air Ambulance has announced the start of a ‘comprehensive study’ of the company’s medical data records. The Canadian owned international repatriation service has put medical director Dr Raymond Kao in charge of the research.
The company aims to study the data on every patient transfer for the last 10 years. Dr Kao explained that he will examine: “Demographic characteristics and administrative and clinical epidemiology, such as the timeline from the job quote to wheels-up to the patient and repatriation, the condition of each patient at the beginning and completion of the transfer, in-flight procedures followed by the medical staff and any problems encountered during the transfer.”
All this data will then be analysed in order to assess company procedures and, ultimately, make them more effective. Fox Flight president David Fox said this is the largest study of patient transfer records the company has undertaken in its history, with as many as 1,000 individual cases being examined for patterns and anomalies in procedures.
“Because we’ve been doing this work for almost 20 years now, we’re in a unique position to undertake a large-scale study of patient records like this,” Fox added. “The initiative is good for Fox Flight on many levels: we’ll be able to make improvements to our procedures that allow us to do what we do more effectively and just be better prepared to deal with issues that can arise given the condition of the patient being transferred.”
Dr Kao hopes that his work, once published, will help to improve repatriation procedures not just in Fox Flight, but also the aeromedical transfer industry more broadly.