Safety
Safer together through shared learning
Safety is one of the reasons Aeroterra Health was founded. Our member programs fly and drive critically ill and injured patients every day. By learning from one another, we can make medical transport safer for patients, crews, and the communities we serve. To achieve this outcome, the Aeroterra Health board has formed a safety committee tasked with improving safety outcomes for member programs, sharing those lessons with the air and ground medical transport industry, and unifying the organization’s safety conversation.
“Every program has lessons and information another program could benefit from. Our commitment is to make sure those lessons are shared effectively for improved safety outcomes, both internally and externally.”
— Paul Ward, Safety Committee Chair
How we learn together
The Aeroterra Health Safety Committee brings together safety and operational leaders from every member program. Members bring experience in aviation and ground ambulance safety, clinical operations, safety management systems, human factors, fatigue risk management, and quality. The committee follows a simple four-step process.
STEP 01
Identify
Topics come from safety reports, operational experience, trends, research, regulatory change, and submissions from the wider transport community.
STEP 02
Review
Members compare experiences across programs and examine the available data and research, applying human factors and safety management principles.
STEP 03
Distill
The committee identifies transferable lessons: practices to consider, cautions, and unresolved questions.
STEP 04
Share
Approved lessons are shared through tools, case examples, and presentations.
What the committee does not do
The committee does not investigate events, evaluate individual programs, or assign blame. It does not replace any program’s own safety management system, and it is not a regulator. People report and learn more openly when the focus is on systems rather than on blame, and our work is built on that principle.
Where we’re focused
Our work centers on the organizational and system conditions that shape safety across both air and ground transport.
Leadership, Culture, and Trust
How leaders build credibility, stay visible, and create the conditions where people speak up.
Reporting and Organizational Learning
Turning reports into action people can see, so that reporting continues.
Fatigue and Human Performance
How staffing, workload, and scheduling affect the people doing the work.
Technology and System Integration
What new systems deliver, and the consequences no one planned for.
Communication and Coordination
How information moves among pilots, clinicians, communication specialists, mechanics, and ground crews.
Regulatory and Industry Change
How changing standards and operating conditions affect programs and the people in them.
What we’re working on
Current focus · Updated October 2026
From more data to better decisions
Most transport programs collect a great deal of safety information. Fewer manage to turn it into learning that changes outcomes. The committee is examining the path from frontline experience and reported data to shared understanding, sound decisions, and measurable action.
That includes a practical question: Do programs that use different safety management systems exchange meaningful lessons without all adopting the same technology platform?
This and other questions are being explored to improve safety outcomes for member programs as well as the industry at large.
Who’s involved
The Safety Committee includes safety and operational leaders from each Aeroterra Health member program:
Advocate Health
Flight For Life Wisconsin
HealthNet Aeromedical Services
Intermountain Health
MedFlight of Ohio
Vanderbilt Health
Share what you’ve learned
Safer transport depends on honest conversation about what went well, what didn’t, and what we still don’t understand. We welcome lessons, questions, research, and improvement ideas from anyone who works in or studies medical transport, whether or not your program is an Aeroterra Health member.