Air Care and Mobile Care

Since its inception in 1984, Air Care has completed more than 50,000 accident-free patient care flight missions. The Air Care 1 base is in Walton, KY; Air Care 2 is located at Butler County (OH) Regional Airport; Air Care 3 is in Mount Orab, OH. Each base has an EC145 helicopter, operated by Metro Aviation, Inc.

UC offers the most robust HEMS experience available to EM residents in the United States. Following a rigorous 9 month-long flight MD orientation during the R1 year, our EM residents join the Air Care team as flight docs (an integral member of the RN-MD flight crew) starting in the R2 year and continuing throughout the remainder of residency. The experience on the helicopter is an unparalleled training opportunity within the field of EM, and is a critical factor in the clinical maturation of our residents. Attending medical control is always available by radio or telephone, but our flight docs and flight nurses (each of whom is truly "the best of the best") have earned considerable autonomy in the care of our critically ill and injured patients. Air Care is clearly one of the jewels of the EM residency program, the Department of EM, and UC Health.  The average UCEM resident graduates having flown 65 patients during their residency, while some with a particular passion for HEMS have flown more than 100 patients.

Air Care is a part of the continuum of care offered by the larger organization: UC Health Air Care & Mobile Care (ACMC). ACMC is one of a very few transport medicine services in the nation to be accredited by CAMTS (Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems) in four levels of care (BLS, ALS, Mobile ICU, and Air). CAMTS accreditation is a voluntary and rigorous process, and is regarded as a marker of clinical and operational excellence within the critical care transport medicine community.

Last year in 2025, Air Care transported about 1250 patients. Approximately 65% of our flights are interhospital critical care transfers and 35% are scene flights, which are virtually all for trauma. About 12% of our flight volume is pediatric. Our flight crews endotracheally intubate approximately 5% of Air Care’s patients, either prior to or even (rarely) during flight. Equipment available on each helicopter includes a cooler with 4 units of blood products, video laryngoscopy, Butterfly ultrasound, Epoc (POC blood gas, lactate, chem 7, and hemoglobin), and procedure kits for art line placement, cricothyrotomy, finger thoracostomy, pericardiocentesis, Minnesota tube, lateral canthotomy, field limb amputation, umbilical vein catheterization, escharotomy, and resuscitative hysterotomy. The EM residency has an academic membership in AMPA (Air Medical Physician Association). Robust research opportunities involving HEMS are available to residents through Air Care.

At Air Care & Mobile Care, safety is much more than a priority; it is our most important core value, and we are extremely proud of our pristine safety record since the birth of the program in 1984. Safety technology present aboard each dual-engine EC145 helicopter includes night vision goggles, instrument flight rules (IFR) capability, traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS), terrain avoidance warning system (TAWS), and autopilot. Air Care’s aviation services are provided by Metro Aviation, Inc., who employs our pilots and mechanics, who are some of the very best in the worldwide air medical community. Our motto is: "Safety—Every One, Every Mission, Every Day.”

ACMC has two overriding organizational philosophies:

1. When we make decisions, we make them by first asking "What is the safest way to do this?" and secondly asking "What’s best for the patient?"
2. We view our mission as not just to bring critically ill patients rapidly to definitive care, but rather to bring as much definitive care as possible rapidly to the patient, wherever they may be located.

To contact ACMC please visit, call 513-584-CARE, or check us out on Facebook.