Erlanger considers selling Life Force fleet as part of new air arrangement

Erlanger hospital is considering selling its three Life Force helicopters to an air-medical provider that would become the hospital’s partner in treating patients who need emergency transport.

At Erlanger’s budget and finance committee meeting Monday evening, Roger Forgey, senior vice president of operations, presented a proposal for a contract between the hospital and Dallas-based Med-Trans Corp.

Erlanger’s full board of trustees will evaluate and vote on the proposal at Thursday’s board meeting.

After purchasing the three helicopters and other aviation assets for about $12.1 million, Med-Trans would provide aviation services and bill patients who have been transported in the Life Force helicopters, as well as update the aviation equipment, Mr. Forgey said.

The partnership would give stability to the Life Force program during the 10-year contract and would give important updates to the hospital’s aging helicopter fleet, Mr. Forgey said.

Two of Life Force’s helicopters are models from the 1980s, he said at the meeting.

“That replacement cost for the fleet would be somewhere in the range of $20 million,” he said.

Med-Trans would reimburse Erlanger for its medical crews, who would remain Erlanger employees, as well as its medical supplies, communication center activities and other services, according to the proposal. Erlanger would retain full medical control and management of the Life Force program.

“We actually maintain all of our medical assets, our medical control, our program name. ... We are still Life Force; we are just taking on a partner that ... (would) manage our aviation assets,” he said.

Sixteen of Erlanger’s 59 Life Force employees — those who are pilots or involved in maintenance — would become Med-Trans employees, but none would take any cut in pay, Mr. Forgey said.

Also at the meeting, Chief Financial Officer Britt Tabor said the hospital gained $1.35 million from income in February.

Uncompensated care — including losses from TennCare and charity care, as well as bad debt — reached $54 million year-to-date, which puts Erlanger on track to reach $80 million in uncompensated care by the end of the fiscal year, Mr. Tabor said.

The proportion of uncompensated care that is provided to enrollees in TennCare, the state’s managed Medicaid program, has been declining since the TennCare Bureau disenrolled 170,000 recipients beginning in 2005, as part of reform efforts, Mr. Tabor said.

As the number of TennCare enrollees declined, the number of uninsured patients who cannot pay increased, making losses from bad debt a growing proportion of the hospital’s losses, he said.