What documents are needed for a medical repatriation?
Medical transports often happen at speed. You fall ill abroad and need to get home urgently for treatment. A relative is involved in a traffic accident and needs emergency surgery. Before you know it, everything is happening at once: there are route plans to confirm, air ambulance flights to schedule, ground transports to arrange… It can quickly feel overwhelming. The good news is that experienced medical transport companies like EMS Air Ambulance & Medical Repatriation will handle all these things for you. There are of course some key documents that we’ll need from you (don’t worry – we’ll explain these really clearly during the repatriation!). But many others will be processed by us as a normal part of the operation. Here’s a quick summary of the documents that are generated on an average mission…
Documents we need from you…
Quote acceptance
This is the document that kicks off the transport process. Once you’ve spoken to our repatriation specialists and explained your patient’s medical situation, they’ll send you a quote for the transport by road, air ambulance or medical escort (usually within 60 mins). If you’re happy to go ahead, you just click a link to sign the form (you can do this online).
Proof of payment
This document acts as our green light to begin the transport. You’ll receive an invoice for the transport, including details of how to make the payment. Once you’ve completed the transfer, you simply forward a proof of payment from your bank, or even a screenshot of the receipt or transfer. Shortly after, you’ll receive an order confirmation for your case, along with a timetable.
Medical report
This is an important document that helps our team prepare the transport. It will detail things like your patient’s current condition and treatment, vital statistics, and medications and doses. We’ll use this information to make sure the ambulance team, vehicles and aircraft have the right personnel and equipment ready. We can usually get your foreign medical team to forward this to us, but it will save time if you have a copy that you can send to us direct.
Doctor’s letter
Similar to the Medical Report, this document helps us understand more about the background to the case. It’s usually a summary of your patient’s medical history, what’s happened, and any key recommendations for their treatment – that they’ll need to be taken to a rehabilitation centre, for example. Your patient’s medical team will usually be able to send this to us direct but, again, if you already have the information yourself, it will speed up the process if you can forward it to us
Passport scan
While the repatriation gets underway, you can help us by getting the travel documents ready. We will need a passport or resident permit for your patient, and any other passengers who intend to travel with us, such as a friend, relative or a whole family. We don’t need the physical documents; a scan or photocopy by email, text or fax will do
Visa scan
Some countries of course have Visa entry requirements for patients flying in from abroad. Depending on the countries involved, this can be a lengthy process. Fortunately, most countries have a Visa on Arrival process for emergency medical repatriations, which means we can complete the form during the transport. You can find out more about how these work in this article: What is a Visa on Arrival – and how do you get one?
Other documents you might encounter during the process…
As we said above, you’ll also start to see a number of other documents emerge during the repatriation process. Most of these won’t require any input from you, though – EMS can take care of them for you. These types of documents include:
Medical Intake Form – this is a summary from our Case Supervisor confirming your patient’s personal and medical details
Medical Transport Document (MTD) – this is a record of your patient’s status and progress during the journey, including any treatment that might take place
PCR test result – if you’re travelling by Air Ambulance or taking an intercontinental flight, we will likely need you to take a PCR test for COVID and send us the result
Repatriation Certificate – a form that confirms when a medical transport has taken place (sometimes requested by insurance companies as they process an application)
Customer feedback form – a simple document that allows you to tell us what you thought of the transport so we can keep improving our services
Interested in reading more on this topic? You might find this article helpful!
Need to talk? We’re here to help. Just get in touch with our friendly experts by phone, email or WhatsApp. Head to our Contact page for the details. You can also get a free, no-obligation cost estimate for your repatriation with our online pricing calculator.