Air ambulance crews are increasingly filling the gaps left by rural hospital closures, and the demand is growing every year, NPR reported from Maine.
LifeFlight of Maine flew 3,031 flights in 2025, more than one every three hours, according to NPR. Demand for medical flights in the state has doubled since 2015, and this year it is up another 10%.
Nationwide, rural hospitals are closing, converting to outpatient-only emergency hospitals or ending services such as labor and delivery. With every closure, medical care gets farther away for people who live there.
“The need for air medical services is increasing year over year,” said Nicholas George, who runs the ETHOS Database, a national tracking system for air medical programs.
NPR reported that Medicaid cuts, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $911 billion over 10 years, could put hundreds more rural hospitals or maternity departments at risk.
Most LifeFlight trips are transfers between hospitals, where crews stabilize a patient at a small local hospital and fly them to a larger one. Flight nurse Denise Saucier, who has done the job for seven years, called it a dream job. “It really hits home how rural Maine is and how necessary EMS is in the state,” she said.
Rural Arizona faces many of the same long distances, making air medical transport a lifeline in parts of the state as well.
Sources: NPR. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Air Medical 24×7 / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
