Every moment counts when your child needs urgent medical care. You may have a newborn who is ill or born prematurely, or a child who has experienced an accident. When you need care immediately, our mission is rapid, advanced level transport while providing quality care .

Mission Children's Hospital Transport Team has a close working relationship with community hospitals, first-responders and EMS personnel, who evaluate, stabilize and prepare major trauma victims to move to Mission for specialized care.

The Infant Transport Team is available to provide rapid, efficient critical care while transporting your newborn to Mission Children's Hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The team works both ground (Regional Transport) and/or by air with the Mountain Area Medical Airlift (MAMA) in the Western North Carolina area.

On neonatal transport flights, a neonatal nurse specialist and a respiratory therapist travel with an incubator on MAMA. Your baby is met at our hospital by an organized, highly-trained, multidisciplinary team dedicated to neonatal care.

Many babies are transported to Mission Children's Hospital from other hospitals by the Infant Transport Team. Our NICU accommodates any sick infant requiring intensive care, except for those requiring surgical intervention for heart disease. If a newborn is in distress at one of the hospitals included within Mission's 17-county service area, the doctor at its location can call a Mission Children's Hospital neonatologist, who then provides either a medical consult or, if appropriate, arranges to have the baby transported promptly to our NICU. Currently about six percent of MAMA's flights transport newborns.

Once they arrive at Mission's state-designated neonatal intensive care unit, our expert team of neonatologists, nurses and therapists make sure these infants and their families receive the advanced neonatal care and support required.

When air transport is unavailable or inappropriate, babies and children may also be transported by a Mission ground ambulance to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) a state-of-the-art, nine-bed critical care unit serving newborns to 18 year-olds.

(MAMA) includes two helicopters and has been serving the Western North Carolina area with a stellar safety record since 1986. It is the only air-medical transport system in Western North Carolina that accommodates newborns as well as children and adults. MAMA was also the first civilian EMS helicopter service in the United States to use night-vision in its flights, enabling us to fly rapidly to pick-up sites even in the dark.