Dr. Adam Angeles, board-certified plastic surgeon, wound specialist and founder of the Angeles Wound Care Institute, a division of Bend Plastic Surgery, partners with Angel Flight West to bring advanced wound care services directly to patients in remote Oregon communities with no means of transportation to specialty clinics. Angel Flight West is a nonprofit organization of volunteer pilots and airline partners who provide free air transportation for people in need of medical treatment far from home.
On Tuesday, Aug. 5, Dr. Angeles and Clinical Manager & Surgery Coordinator Majestic Worthington, CCMA, departed from Bend Municipal Airport around noon with a full load of medical supplies, flying aboard a Beechcraft Bonanza piloted by volunteer Robert Brunner of Salem (SLE). They landed at Grant County Regional Airport in John Day to treat patients from both John Day and Burns, then returned to Bend by 4:30 p.m.
“The Angeles Wound Care Institute is proud to partner with Angel Flight to bring advanced wound care services to patients in remote communities across Oregon,” said Dr. Angeles. “This collaboration allows our team to reach individuals who would otherwise have no means of accessing the specialized care they need. Through Angel Flight’s transportation support, we can travel far beyond Central Oregon to treat patients living with chronic, non-healing wounds – patients who may not be able to travel to our Bend facility.”
Specialty medical care is hard to come by in many of Oregon’s rural communities, especially east of the Cascades. According to the Oregon Office of Rural Health, 35% of Oregonians live in rural or frontier counties, where specialty providers are scarce and travel distances are long. For many residents, reaching advanced care requires a two-to-four-hour drive each way — a journey made even more difficult by limited public transportation options, variable weather, or urgent medical needs.
For patients with chronic conditions requiring frequent treatment, such as many of Dr. Angeles’s wound care patients, this level of travel is often impossible. The partnership between the Angeles Wound Care Institute and Angel Flight West helps eliminate this obstacle by bringing care directly to patients.
Chronic wounds affect 6.5 million people in the U.S. annually and untreated cases can lead to severe infection, hospitalization, amputation, or even death. Wound care is a specialized field of medicine that focuses on diagnosing, treating and monitoring acute, chronic and complex wounds that fail to heal with standard care. Treatment can include debridement (removing dead or infected tissue to promote healing), infection control, specialized dressings, compression therapy, nutritional support and advanced biologic therapies.
Dr. Angeles specializes in cutting-edge treatments such as amniotic tissue skin substitute therapy, which uses regenerative biologic materials to stimulate tissue repair in chronic, non-healing wounds. These therapies can significantly reduce healing time and improve long-term outcomes for patients with diabetic ulcers, pressure sores and other complex wounds.
“By delivering expert wound care directly to Oregon’s rural communities, we aim to improve outcomes, enhance quality of life and ensure that no patient is left without access to the treatment they require,” said Dr. Angeles.
Dr. Angeles has more than 25 years of wound care training, research and practice. He is the Founder and Medical Director of Bend Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery and the Angeles Wound Care Institute, a division dedicated to the treatment of chronic and complex wounds. Since starting his practice in Bend in 2005, Dr. Angeles and his team have offered a full range of state-of-the-art surgical and non-surgical procedures to patients in the Pacific Northwest, including outreach to rural communities such as John Day, Burns and Lakeview.
Angel Flight West is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that delivers health and hope using donated flights to serve those with health care or other compelling human needs. In the air, Angel Flight West links volunteer pilots and commercial airlines with people whose non-emergency health needs require long distance travel to access care. On the ground, volunteer drivers ferry passengers to and from their departure and destination airports.
This article appears in the Source October 2, 2025.
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