Discover how medical evacuation ensures you get the care you need, wherever life takes you.
What are the benefits of having medical evacuation in your health insurance plan?
Living or spending a significant amount of time overseas, whether you’re an expatriate, a digital nomad, a global business traveller, or a retiree, is an enriching experience that exposes you to a wealth of new cultures, people, opportunities, and adventures.
Alongside the excitement comes the need to manage potential risks, much as you would in your home country. International private medical insurance (IPMI) is one of your key allies in this respect, acting as your essential health and well-being partner when you live abroad.
One of the most vital aspects of IPMI plans is medical evacuation, a benefit that is easy to overlook but crucial to understand.
Medical evacuation is the process of moving a patient to a suitable medical facility, often in another country, for treatment, and may happen in emergencies as well as when someone needs specialist diagnostics, consultations, or ongoing treatment, usually when local facilities cannot provide the necessary level of care.
While that may sound straightforward, there’s much more to it than your health insurer simply arranging your flight or another mode of transportation!
Coordinating a safe medical evacuation often requires navigating complex and unpredictable obstacles far beyond basic travel logistics, ranging from failing communication infrastructure and restricted airspace to the impact of severe weather or even political instability.
Let’s look more closely at how and why comprehensive medical evacuation coverage is an essential component of any robust IPMI plan.
The whole point of having IPMI coverage is to ensure you can get the proper medical care whenever you need it. Medical evacuation coverage is simply an extension of that commitment from your insurer.
When you’re living overseas, you might require a specific type of treatment, but find that:
Imagine suffering a cardiac event in a country with limited specialist facilities, as recently happened to one of our members, or requiring neurological treatment that is unavailable where you live. In these scenarios, both your immediate and long-term health depend on you receiving care and attention quickly.
Medical evacuation bridges these gaps and ensures you can get to a location where:
Whether you require a short flight to another city in the same country or an international transfer to a world-renowned hospital somewhere like Singapore or London, medical evacuation coverage ensures your health outcomes aren’t determined by your location when you need medical attention.
Medical evacuation doesn't always end once you transfer to a new location for treatment; comprehensive coverage may also include repatriation to your home country for continued treatment or recovery. This can be an invaluable benefit if you receive a serious illness diagnosis, require long-term treatment or support, or lack a support network in your overseas location.
Having the ability to receive treatment at home brings both practical and emotional benefits. You will be in familiar surroundings, be able to communicate easily with everyone around you, and have the support of loved ones close at hand, all of which can help improve your recovery.
Many expats in your situation find comfort knowing they can return home if something serious happens. Repatriation turns isolating and frightening medical experiences overseas into more manageable scenarios, where you’re surrounded by those who matter most.
While medical evacuation is a crucial lifeline in life-or-death and time-critical emergencies, it’s there to support you in non-emergency, medically necessary evacuations, too.
Say you’re diagnosed with a condition and require a complex but non-emergency surgery or procedure. This may be something like a joint replacement or a specific type of early-stage cancer therapy. If local expertise and facilities are insufficient, your IPMI provider can arrange a planned medical evacuation so you can receive the treatment you need.
In these scenarios, your IPMI provider can liaise with its medical provider network to design a treatment plan and the relevant transfers to the best locations and facilities for the care you need. This approach ensures you receive the best possible care for serious conditions, even outside of immediate emergencies, and gives you options and control over where you receive healthcare.
Discover how we helped one of our members receive the treatment she needed overseas.
As with any insurance plan, the most significant benefit of medical evacuation cover is the peace of mind it provides. The complexity and cost of arranging medical transport can be overwhelming, before you even consider the situation you or a loved one is dealing with.
Arranging a medical evacuation involves:
The cost of all this would be astronomical without insurance; an air ambulance flight alone can cost tens of thousands of dollars and beyond, depending on your condition and what you need to ensure a safe journey.
But with comprehensive medical evacuation cover, you don't have to worry about any of this.
For example, if you’re a Now Health International member, a single call to our 24/7 customer service team after receiving your diagnosis is often all it takes. We’ll engage with our clinical team and get to work designing your treatment plan and managing the logistics so you and your family can focus on what matters most: your health.
View medical evacuation coverage not as a helpful add-on, but as an essential safety net that provides you with peace of mind during your life abroad, ensuring you retain access to world-class healthcare wherever life takes you.
All of our comprehensive private health plans include medical evacuation cover, subject to plan limits. Explore all our private health plans and find the comprehensive cover that gives you and your family the peace of mind you deserve.