Bianca Moorman/The Meridian StarHeather Hobby, with True North Animal Transport and Jeff Wall, a volunteer pilot with Angel Flight Soars, load COVID-19 specimens to be flown to Texas at Meridian Aviation on Sunday.

A Meridian hospital is partnering with a group of volunteers to speed up the turnaround time on COVID-19 test results. 

Anderson Regional Medical Center is working with Angel Flight Soars to speed up processing of the specimens.

The test kits are flown from Meridian Aviation to a lab in Denton, Texas.  The first flight left on Sunday. 

The partnership means patients can receive test results faster, and on weekends, when there previously was no available transport, according to a new release. 

“They reached out to us last week, and we said ‘this is great,’” said John Anderson, president and CEO of Anderson Regional Medical Center.

On weekdays, the typical turnaround time for results is 36 hours, Anderson said. Before this partnership, the hospital had to wait for an additional 24 to 48 hours to get results on weekends, he said. 

Jeff Wall, a volunteer pilot with Angel Flight, said he’s glad to take part in the missions. 

“I think it’s a very important mission,” said Wall, who also volunteers to transport cancer or burn patients. “The faster the test results can come back, the better the decision making can happen.Getting test results back on the same day is a big deal.”

According to an Angel Flight Soars news release, relief efforts began with a volunteer pilot flying specimens from Tifton to Augusta, Georgia, cutting the time by more than half.

Angel Flight Soars then partnered with Navicent Health in Macon, Ga., where volunteer pilots are flying daily missions from Macon to labs in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. 

The group is also partnering with Cape Fear Valley Health in Fayetteville, N.C., and PathGroup laboratories in Nashville to transport specimens on the weekends when commercial medical transport isn’t available.

The service means test specimens can get from health centers to labs seven days a week, and in many cases, patients receive results in as little as eight hours instead of waiting up to five days.