Unalaska’s LifeMed air ambulance base is up and running again after the company briefly removed its crew from the Aleutians earlier this month.
The company temporarily closed its Dutch Harbor base from June 5–13, citing financial concerns. They said the closure was a test to “support medevac flight volume and resource efficiency.”
LifeMed originally planned to relocate its Unalaska crew to Anchorage for at least three months, but locals went just over a week without immediate access to LifeMed’s medevac services before the company reversed course.
Officials with the Anchorage-based company say Unalaska community leadership played a key role in that decision.
LifeMed representatives visited Unalaska in mid-June to discuss the trial with city and healthcare officials. They said both senior leadership with LifeMed and local officials agreed that the medevac services are critical to the island and the larger Aleutian region.
Unalaska is roughly 800 air miles from the nearest hospital, and home to about 4,500 year-round residents, a number that doubles during peak fishing seasons. Maintaining a base in Unalaska also allows LifeMed to quickly service several other Aleutian communities.
LifeMed representatives say the Unalaska crew will remain on the island. Still, the company is facing many challenges including “unsustainable reimbursement rates from government payors and increasing denials from commercial insurers for medically necessary transport.”
Officials say patient care will remain uninterrupted if a future change occurs. Still, removing local crew would mean a longer mobilization time to get an aircraft to the region, even if they used faster aircraft during an emergency.
LifeMed has crews stationed across the state — from Fairbanks to Bethel, down to Kodiak and Dutch Harbor. They keep a two-person rotating crew in Dutch Harbor with a King Air 200 aircraft at the Tom Madsen Airport.
