Ornge Fast Facts 

• Ornge is Canada’s leading innovator in the emerging field of transport medicine, performing over 18,000 admissions every year.

• The program was established by the Ontario Ministry of Health in 1977 with a single aircraft based in Toronto. Today the program operates from numerous transport medicine bases across the province and can reach every community in Ontario.

• Ornge, as defined in the Ambulance Act is a designated base hospital with medical authority over patients in the transport medicine environment including all Ornge air and land transport vehicles.

• Ornge has over 400 employees including transport medicine paramedics and physicians and a team of educators and researchers.

• Medical care on-board Ornge aircraft is provided by flight paramedics with specialized training in the care of acute patients in the aero medical transport environment. Currently Ornge has a team of more than 150 transport medicine paramedics certified to practice in Ontario.

• Physician specialists in emergency medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and critical care are directly involved in Ornge transport medicine.

• Through a multi-system communication network, flight paramedics have direct access to Ornge transport medicine physicians on the ground for consultation and to receive medical orders under the physician’s license.

• Ornge operates a Critical Care Land Transport program delivered by Ornge paramedics who are trained to care for critically ill patients in the medical transport environment.

• The Ornge Academy of Transport Medicine offers programs suited to a variety of levels of practitioners and is one of the only Canadian Medical Association (CMA) accredited Critical Care Flight Paramedic programs in Canada. It also offers a CMA accredited Advanced Care Flight Paramedic program, which is designed for advanced care paramedics who want to expand their scope of practice.

• Ornge is accredited by the prestigious Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems.

• Ornge Communications Centre officers and Transport Medicine Physicians spent over 8,500 hours on incoming and outgoing calls from April 1/08 – March 31/09… that is equivalent to 355 days or almost an entire year coordinating various aspects of transport medicine activities.

• Total Statute Miles (1 statute mile = 1.15 miles) flown – 6,725,780… or 7,734,647 nautical miles… the average distance from the centre of the earth to the centre of the moon is 238,857 miles (477,714 round trip) – Ornge has flown the equivalent of  more than 16 trips to the moon and back.

• The number of patients transported by Ornge in 2008/09 (20,385) exceeds the capacity of the Air Canada Centre (19,800 seats).