Long-Distance Medical Transportation for Elderly & Bed-Confined Patients

The decision behind the trip

Nearly every family who calls about a long-distance move is in the middle of something difficult. A parent is being brought closer to an adult child. A spouse is moving to a facility that can finally provide the level of care they need. Someone is going home, in the sense families mean when they say it. The transport is the last logistical piece of a decision that has already been emotionally expensive.

Commercial flights are usually not an option for a bed-confined patient, and air ambulance is a different order of cost that many families do not need clinically. Ground stretcher transport sits in between: your parent lies flat and secured for the whole journey, with attendants beside them, in a vehicle that stops when they need it to.

We do these moves across Georgia and state to state. The distance is the least complicated part. What takes care is the person on the stretcher.

How the journey is run

Two attendants travel with the patient for the entire trip — one at the wheel, one able to remain in the patient compartment. Your parent is positioned on a stretcher with padding and blankets, repositioned as needed on longer legs, and monitored the whole way. We plan the route around rest stops rather than driving through them.

• Comfort stops built into the timetable — for repositioning, for the restroom, for a break from the road. We do not treat the drive as a clock to beat.
• Communication with family en route: departure confirmation, periodic updates along the way, and a message on arrival. If you are driving separately or flying ahead, you will know where we are.
• Coordination with facilities on both ends — confirming the discharge time with the sending facility and the expected arrival and room with the receiving one, so nobody is left waiting in a corridor.
• One family member is welcome to ride along. Many adult children want to be in the vehicle for this trip, and we plan the seat for it.
• Door to door: we begin at the bed or the bedroom and end at the bed or the room on the other end, not at a curb.

How quoting works

Long-distance stretcher relocations are quoted individually, by phone. There is no calculator on this page because a real quote depends on things a form cannot capture: the total distance and whether it is a single-day or overnight run, the level of assistance your parent needs at each end, whether stairs or a difficult transfer are involved at either address, the discharge timing the sending facility can commit to, and whether a family member is riding along.

Call 678-696-1583 and describe the move. We will tell you plainly whether ground stretcher transport is the right fit — and if the clinical picture calls for a higher level of care than we provide, we will say so rather than take the job.

These moves are private pay and billed by direct invoice. Heart2Heart bills insurance for medically necessary transports such as dialysis, wound care and emergency-department related trips. Coverage depends on the patient's plan and is never guaranteed, and we do not bill Medicaid. We do not accept Medicaid under any circumstances.

Planning the timing

Give us as much notice as you can, particularly for out-of-state moves — advance notice is what lets us assign the crew you want and coordinate arrival with the receiving facility's admissions hours. That said, discharge dates move, and we are used to it. If the hospital changes the date on you, tell us and we will re-plan around it.

If the destination facility is still being chosen, call anyway. Knowing the realistic travel time to two or three candidate cities sometimes changes which one a family picks.

The logistics view of the same service

This page is written for families. If you are a discharge planner, case manager, or facility coordinator who needs the operational detail — vehicle configuration, crew composition, scheduling lead times, and how we handle transfers at each end — our long-distance stretcher transport service page covers the same work from that angle.