When a medical emergency arises that requires some form of assistance a call will generally be placed to the appropriate emergency control centre within that country. In the UK, people requiring help from any of the emergency services will dial 999. The control centre will contact the relevant service or services and the decision about the type of unit they dispatch will be made depending on the individual circumstances of the emergency. Whether or not a patient requires medical air transportation is a judgment made by the particular authorities and is not something that the patient will need to consider.
However, the main thing that people need to take into consideration in regard to medical air transportation is how this service is funded. In the United Kingdom there are several ways that the cost of this service is absorbed. These include:
