Essex & Herts Air Ambulance Logo

Essex & Herts Air Ambulance

We provide a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) by bringing the hospital to the critically ill and injured patients of Essex, Hertfordshire and surrounding areas.

About Essex & Herts Air Ambulance


Tags: Police, fire & emergency services Health & Medical Armed Forces & Emergency Services

Your local life-saving charity
Essex & Herts Air Ambulance, unlike NHS emergency services, is a charity. The free life-saving service is provided 24/7 by helicopters and by rapid response vehicles.

Each critical care team consists of a pilot and co-pilot, a pre-hospital care doctor and a critical care paramedic.

They can be rushed to the scene with life-saving support equipment to deliver advanced clinical care, usually only available in the hospital emergency department.

Once stabilised, the patient will be conveyed to the most appropriate hospital by air or land.

It costs £12 million every year to cover all operational and charitable costs.
Without access to National Lottery funding and with only limited support from Government, we rely upon the generosity and goodwill of the people and businesses of Essex and Hertfordshire to remain operational and keep saving lives…we can’t fly without you!

We aim to save lives and reduce or prevent disability or suffering from critical illness and injury by delivering a first-class pre-hospital emergency medical service across Essex, Hertfordshire, and surrounding areas.

Our highly skilled and specially trained pre-hospital care doctors and critical care paramedics work alongside our regional partners using helicopters and rapid response vehicles fitted with state-of-the-art life-saving equipment. Our critical care teams are dispatched by the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust.

We are here to assist everyone who lives, works, or travels through the region. The charity provides the service free of charge to patients of all ages, from every background and faith, who require the most advanced clinical care.

Your Impact

On average, we treat 1,200 patients every year, with our HEMS team dispatched approximately seven times per day across Essex, Hertfordshire and surrounding areas.

We strive to save lives, reduce or prevent disability, or suffering from critical illness and injury, by delivering a first-class pre-hospital emergency medical service, but we rely on the goodwill and generosity of people and businesses in our local communities to keep our life-saving service operational. With two helicopters and a fleet of rapid response vehicles (RRVs), our life-saving service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each base works a twelve-hour helicopter shift when daylight hours allow. The shift continues in a rapid response vehicle (RRV) when daylight hours are reduced.

Centre for Excellence

The vision for the Centre for Excellence is to create a world-leading community through which pre-hospital care is developed, reaching the highest possible standards whilst delivering the best possible outcomes for patients.

Our Centre for Excellence was created in 2022. We realised that to continue to deliver the best possible clinical care for our future patients, an investment is needed in the future of medical care. In all areas of medicine, discoveries are constantly being made. More complex, and more effective interventions are being delivered for patients. Our charity board determined that we would work hard to fund a Centre for Excellence that would prepare us for future opportunities for our patients.
During our journey of setting out a vision for a Centre for Excellence, we have pledged to always thrive to bring better and more effective care to our patients.

During our journey of setting out a vision for a Centre for Excellence, we have pledged to always thrive to bring better and more effective care to our patients.

Our vision for the Centre for Excellence is to create a world-leading community through which pre-hospital care is developed to achieve the best possible outcomes for people in our region and beyond.

Our mission is to develop a framework to improve the health outcomes from illness and injury by striving to reach the highest possible standards of pre-hospital clinical care through research, innovation and education. Furthermore, to work collaboratively to share knowledge for the benefit of all.

There are four pillars to the Centre for Excellence:

Research and Scholarship
Education and Training
Innovation
Community
There are three domains to the Centre for Excellence:

Head Injury
Cardiac Arrest
Patient Experience and Outcomes

We will focus our major efforts and resources on research, education and innovation around our three clinical domains. In other areas, we constantly monitor and evaluate best practice so that we always make sure our patients get the best care.

£50

Could buy a splint to provide traction to broken long bones

£319

Could buy one unit of lyophilised plasma (blood on board)

£2800

Could fund an average mission