2019 saw 406
Life Flights from
Bluffton + 19 ground transports

On Feb 1, 2021, Mercy Health will introduce a consolidated Life Flight Network to handle its air and ground transportation services.

The Bluffton Airport is home to one of the four Mercy Health Life Flight bases involved in the new network. Other bases include a mobile ICU base, plus air bases in Wauseon and Sandusky.

The Life Flight Network will combine and coordinate existing air services of Life Flight, which provides medical transportation services, including critical care transport, with ground medical transportation services provided by LACP and LifeStar.

Ronda Lehman, president, Mercy Health – Lima, said, “The consolidation of the air and ground services allows our health care partners the ability to work with a single, high quality, patient-focused and complete medical transport service.” 

“By consolidating our traditionally separate ground and air resources, experience, and operations into a new company, Mercy Health will improve the efficiency of our transportation network, while adding increased flexibility and availability of medical transportation to all the communities we serve.”

Bluffton’s Life Flight base
Mike Conrad, director of Mercy Health Life Flight, said that the Bluffton base includes five paramedics, five nurses, four pilots and one helicopter maintenance technician.

Using a Leonardo a109e helicopter, typical flights from Bluffton carry a pilot, nurse, medic and one patient.

The Bluffton base covers an area extending to the Ohio-Indiana state line to the west, southern Wood County to the north, the Marion area to the east, and the Shelby county area to the south.

Conrad said that in 2019 there were 406 Life Flights from Bluffton plus 19 ground transports.

In addition to a helicopter, the Bluffton base operates a jeep used in inclement weather, often coordinated Bluffton EMS.

Mercy Health – Life Flight Network
Once operational, Mercy Health – Life Flight Network will consist of five multi-engine helicopters, five mobile ICU units as well as 28 ambulances and 12 ambulettes. The initial service area will cover more than 11,500 square miles throughout northwest Ohio, west central Ohio and southeast Michigan.

The Mercy Health – Life Flight program was the first air ambulance service established in the region and is among the first to be established in the country.

Since taking flight in 1979, Life Flight has transported more than 100,000 critically ill and injured people and has provided trauma scene response and critical care transports in the region.

Mercy Health – Life Flight is the only helicopter air ambulance service in the region granted its own Air Carrier Certificate by the FAA.