There are 11 ambulance services in England, providing emergency access to healthcare.

If you call for an emergency ambulance the calls are prioritised into:

  • Category A emergencies, which are immediately life-threatening
  • Category B or C emergencies, which are not life-threatening

The emergency control room decides what kind of response is needed and whether an ambulance is required. For all three types of emergency, they may send a rapid-response vehicle, crewed by a paramedic and equipped to provide treatment at the scene of an incident. Over the past five years the number of ambulance 999 calls has gone up by a third.

The NHS is also responsible for providing transport to get many patients to hospital for treatment. In many areas it is the ambulance trust that provides this service.

Matthew Burgess
http://www.mattburgess.co
I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.