Mercy Flight Central founder hands yoke over to new CEO

Mercy Flight Central hasn’t experienced any turbulence since its founder and CEO, Paul Hyland, retired in June, according to Hyland’s successor.

The leadership change did not cause any trouble because the air-ambulance organization had a flight plan in place for the transition, says Neil Snedeker, new president and CEO of Mercy Flight Central. Snedeker assumed Hyland’s leadership duties after the founder retired on June 20. He officially received the title of CEO in July. 

“We’ve been working on a succession plan in the past two years,” Snedeker says. “I’ve been doing a lot of the responsibilities that Paul had been doing.”

Those responsibilities include overseeing the organization’s strategic goals and finances. Snedeker says he feels comfortable with those duties, both because of the succession plan and because of a longstanding association he has with Mercy Flight Central, which has its headquarters at Canandaigua Airport and also has a base at Marcellus Airport.

Snedeker first joined the air medical-services provider in 1992, the year Hyland founded it as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. From 1992 to 1999, Snedeker served as a part-time flight paramedic at Mercy Flight Central. He has also held a volunteer role sitting on the organization’s board of directors and as the chairman of its board.

Then in September 2010, after retiring from his career of 31 years as a software engineer at AXA Equitable, Snedeker stepped on board full time at Mercy Flight Central as its vice president. He worked at Mercy Flight Central as vice president until October 2011, when he became president and COO.

Although Snedeker has only officially been in line to pilot the nonprofit since his full-time hiring in 2010, he says he has always wanted to lead an air-ambulance group.

“When Paul interviewed me for a paramedic position back in late 1991, one of the questions he asked was, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ ” Snedeker says. “I said, ‘I want your job.’ And I was dead serious.”

That exchange didn’t foster any rivalry between the two men, according to Snedeker. In fact, he feels that Hyland took him under his wing.

“Neil’s been there since we started the company,” Hyland says. “He was the person who stood out from the overall standpoint of being [able to be] the president and CEO. He’s fallen into these different areas of expertise that we need. He’s been chairman of the board. He’s been a paramedic. He was the supervisor over here in Marcellus. So he’s got a background.”

Mercy Flight Central operates one helicopter from its Marcellus location, which is a 3,000-square-foot hanger it owns at 4960 Limeledge Road. That facility includes kitchen, office, and living space for a helicopter crew and is staffed 24 hours per day.

At least three employees man the location at all times — a helicopter pilot, a flight nurse, and a flight paramedic. They rotate shifts, and a total of 12 employees work from the Marcellus location.

Mercy Flight Central has about 80 employees between its Marcellus location and its Canandaigua headquarters. It operates both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft from its base in Canandaigua.

The organization serves a total of 26 counties around the two locations. Its Marcellus base typically covers an area between Ogdensburg, Utica, and Binghamton to the east and Seneca Falls to the west. The border of its western territory stretches north to Lake Ontario.

Crews based at the Marcellus base usually perform between 225 and 250 transports in a year. The entire organization is typically responsible for 650 transports annually, Hyland says. Transports include bringing trauma patients from accident locations to hospitals and moving patients from one hospital to another hospital that can provide a higher level of care.

Mercy Flight Central is budgeted to bring in $12.2 million in revenue in 2012, up from $10.7 million in 2011. It usually receives 

$2 million in annual revenue from fundraising, according to Hyland. Other sources of revenue are patient revenue through Medicare and Medicaid, patient insurance, no-fault insurance, and cash payments

“If we had to depend just on patient revenue, we wouldn’t be here,” he says. “Medicare and Medicaid pay a fraction of the bill. You’ve got a lot of people that just can’t pay the bill — and the bills aren’t cheap. That requires us to have another source of funding, which is our fundraising. The public has stepped up and supported us for years.”

Snedeker does not plan any changes in staffing levels or business practices now that he is CEO, he says.

“The staff has been able to get to know me,” he says. “This was a great way — the succession plan — to be able to bring the staff into the fold while still heading forward.”