While the company has been using air ambulance services since 2003, extending it to cities such as Delhi and Bengaluru, it is for the first time it has entered into a partnership with an aircraft operator. This would be a pilot project, based on which it would extend the service to other parts of the country, said Suneeta Reddy, managing director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL).
Through partnerships with various aviation companies, the hospital chain air transfers about 125-150 patients a year on average.
This would be an extension of its air ambulance services network to several smaller cities and towns like Madurai, Mysore, Kakinada, Karaikudi, Karur, Trichy and Vizag, through its current hubs in ChennaI, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. It would also help it bring in patients from neighbouring South East Asian countries, if the need arises.
The air ambulance will be manned by a full-fledged medical crew trained in critical pre-hospital care protocols to address emergency victims and critically-ill patients. The response time for the air ambulance is around 30 minutes. Reddy said that the cost would be around Rs 1.5 lakh for a 250 kilometer distance and it may vary depending upon the situation.
Arun Sharma, chairman and managing director of Aviators Air Rescue, a business launched in January, said that it operates on a unique model of subcription based service. When it launched, the subscription was of Rs 9000 a year for individuals and Rs 19,000 a year for a family. This has come down to Rs 3,000 for individual and Rs 6,000 for family. For chartered flights, it would charge around Rs 1 lakh for an hour. The company is seeing huge opportunity for the business in India.
Currently it has three air ambulances, stationed in Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru and it is expecting around 50 helicoptors to be introduced over a period of seven years in India to address the market. Each air ambulance would require an investment of around $3-5 million, it added.
Launching the service, J Radhakrishnan, principal secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu, Health and Family Welfare Department, said that the government is in talks with a few air ambulance operators including Aviators Air Rescue, to put a system in place to avail their service for emergency cases across the State for government hospitals.
A new regulation is in the making, under which the air ambulance operators may not require prior permission to land on helipads at short notice, across the State. The government has asked all the district collectors to submit the details such as the longitude and latitude of the available helipads across the State. The Minister for Health is also in talks with the air ambulance operators on the cost aspects related to using the services in case of an emergency, in a case by case basis.
 "Apollo Hospitals launches air ambulance service network")