If you or a loved one get into medical difficulties while travelling, you need to know that you will be able to get home quickly and safely in order to receive further treatment. But in some cases the costs and logistics of being repatriated at short notice can be considerable.

That’s where our Medical Escort service comes in. For situations where there is no immediate threat to life – a skiing injury, for instance, or broken limbs and other non-urgent medical issues – the plan provides a secure, cost-effective means of getting back to your home country swiftly, for ongoing care.

How it works

A Medical Escort is a qualified medical professional, or team of professionals, who travel alongside you while in transit to take care of your needs. When a patient needs to be repatriated quickly, we contact our commercial airline partners to secure a place on the nearest available flight home. We take care of every detail, from beginning to end.

We’ll arrange for an ambulance to take your patient to the airport. Once on board, the Escort will make sure they have everything they need for the journey: they bring all the necessary medicine and equipment with them. During the flight, this might mean administering pain relief and keeping the patient hydrated and comfortable. In more serious cases we can provide oxygen support, or even construct an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) environment if required.

When you land, we’ll arrange for your patient to be collected at the airport and taken to the destination hospital. We can also call ahead so that medical staff in the landing country are on standby for the patient’s arrival.


The key benefits

While there are several different methods of repatriation, and varying reasons why you might use each of them, a Medical Escort offers several key benefits. The service is:

Faster

Transferring a patient by scheduled flight is significantly quicker than using a conventional ambulance. Repatriations can be complex and even risky, and speed is often of the essence.

Further

There is no distance limit for a repatriation under medical supervision. We have transported patients from every corner of the globe, from Mexico to Spain, Germany to China.

More economic

Using a commercial airline usually proves much more cost-effective than chartering a private flight – particularly over long distances.