alt Hacker NewsI tried to find the asterisk there to see the details, but could not.
FWIW I think that HEMS cost is significantly under costed, as the London HEMS H135s run about £2,500 per flight hour on direct flight costs alone, so I suspect the £4,748 figure is referring to that alone.
I think a closer estimate is probably total annual operational costs divided by total shouts, (£18 MM / 2,000) or about £9,000 per shout.
Even that's an under costing, as the clinical personnel, equipment, and liability is shouldered by the NHS. A pure costing is probably closer to 2-3X that per clinical flight.
Still an order of magnitude less than the commercial US operators.
> I think a closer estimate is probably total annual operational costs divided by total shouts, (£18 MM / 2,000) or about £9,000 per shout.
That's a more useful estimate than merely the flight costs, agree - though the fixed operation costs don't change much in an 1800 vs a 2100 callout scenario.
> Still an order of magnitude less than the commercial US operators.
It's wild!