Unfortunately they chose a Customer Satisfaction strategy over an Operational Excellence strategy. There was no clear customer: was it the patient (who gets no say in the choice of medevac provider), was it the physician who orders the medevac (to him or her there was no perception that one provider was better than another - they were completely interchangeable), was it the floor nurse who goes to the Rolodex to see which medevac provider is next up (and who could be swayed a bit if you gave her loads of inexpensive swag), was it the insurance company that actually paid the invoice for services, etc? With no clear customer it’s really hard to build a strategy around Customer Satisfaction.
If they’d focused on Operation Excellence, and made certain they were the most efficient provider of transports they might have been able to decrease their operating costs and captured more flights.
And if they’d done something to eliminate the bogus flight turndowns, that would have helped, too: “Oh, I see thunderstorms 250 miles away and they’re moving this way at 25 mph. I better turn down this 30 minute flight.” [I’m looking at you, Jon]. “Oh, I see there’s a missing flake of gelcoat on the tail faring - the plane’s not airworthy.” [I’m looking at you, George]
American Securities, the private equity firm that controls Air Methods, has some really, really smart people on their staff, but none of them were able to see the poorly chosen strategy.
It was an . . . interesting . . . experience.
