Breakfast with Benefits - Memorial Hermann Life Flight Program

Speaker: Joshua Cools, Director of Business Development at Memorial Hermann Trauma Service Line

Topic: Memorial Hermann Life Flight® is a critical care air medical transport service based in Houston, Texas. We transport critically ill and injured patients in the greater Houston area within a 150-mile radius of the Texas Medical Center.

Founded in 1976 by James "Red" Duke, MD, crews perform about 4,000+ missions each year, making the John S. Dunn Helistop one of the busiest helipads in the world. Since its inaugural flight, Memorial Hermann Life Flight has flown more than 158,000 missions. Accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS), we are committed to excellence in aviation safety and critical care as the only not-for-profit hospital-based air ambulance serving Houston and the surrounding communities.

Life Flight is able to transport up to two patients at a time, with each flight staffed by highly skilled personnel and equipped with advanced emergency equipment and necessary medications. Every Life Flight helicopter is inspected and serviced daily.

The Memorial Hermann Life Flight staff consists of 21 pilots, 21 flight nurses, 18 paramedics, eight dispatchers and eight mechanics. Memorial Hermann Life Flight’s pilots enhance patient care by maintaining Air Transport Pilot status, while flight nurses and paramedics sustain Certified Flight Registered Nurse and Certified Flight Paramedic status.

Provided as a community service by Memorial Hermann, Life Flight operates as a hospital-based, non-profit organization that relies on community support and fundraising efforts to pay for the service. It costs about $15 million annually to support the program, none of which comes from tax dollars.

About the speaker: Joshua Cools is the Director of Business Development for Memorial Hermann Trauma Service Line. Joshua has been with Memorial Hermann since 2010 when he started as a flight paramedic.

Joshua received his Bachelor of Science from University of Houston – Clear Lake and his MBA in Healthcare Administration from the University of Texas at Tyler.

Mr. Cools spends most of his free time with his family: Eliza (wife) and 4 boys ranging from 6 to 16 years old. As you can expect, there’s never a boring moment with 4 boys in a single household. The Cools family enjoys spending time outdoors biking, sailing, and working on their ranch in Northeast Texas