reports and schedule a site visit by its
survey team who ultimately conducts an
audit. The surveyor teamis comprisedby
medical and aviation experts with more
than ten years of industry experience.
Each standard is supported by measurable
criteria to measure a program’s level of
quality, thus Accreditation is based on
meeting a preponderance of the standards.
Frazer says the two highest priorities
focus on patient care and safety of the
transport environment. Furthermore,
accreditation standards are periodically
revised to reflect the dynamic, changing
environment of medical transport with
considerable input from all disciplines of
the medical profession as well as federal,
state, and local governmental agencies.
That can be chal leng ing for an
organization which oversees accreditation of
providers throughout the world, where air
transport and patient care regulations can vary
from one country to the next. For example, in
Canada , to conduct fl ights by night,
regulations require the deployment of two
pilots while the Federal Aviation Authority in
American simply allows for one pilot. Having
recently returned from a consulting project in
Bangkok, Frazer says that to transport a patient
by air used to take up to a week to secure
permission from the government, a process
that has since been narrowed down to 24
hours. That same standard may not fly so well
in other places. Yet, with respect to air
regulations, theCAMTS audits allows
52 | BusinessWorld |
May 2014
