Source
r/NoStupidQuestions•
Brotherbeam

Who owns and maintains Ambulances?

Unanswered

EDIT: going to add “where you live” to help mitigate the fact that results definitely do vary by location.

Police vehicles are usually owned & maintained by Police Departments, and registered as Municipal state vehicles. Fire Trucks & other vehicles of that nature are owned & maintained by Fire Departments, and registered as Municipal state vehicles. Is it the same for Hospitals and Ambulances? I know some Fire Departments own & maintain an ambulance or a few, but those are usually liveried with the Fire Department’s colors and logos on them. I’ve seen private contracted Ambulance vans before, but as far as the typical box-on-chassis Ambulance goes, are they usually owned & maintained by the hospital/s they service, or is there a separate EMS Department where ambulances are owned & maintained in between use?

This is based on the American system by the way, but I would also like to know other answers from different countries.

Posted Dec 5, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC · edited

18
_MusicJunkiecan I put a flair here?•

That's going to depend on the country you're asking about, or even the municipality.

Here in Austria, it's mostly (partly government funded) nonprofits. Red Cross, Workers Samaritans, so on. In some cities there are ambulance services run by the municipality.

4
tmahfan117•

It depends on the ambulance.

Because sometimes there are ambulances that are owned and operated by the fire department, sometimes they are owned and operated by a separate City run department, sometimes they are owned and operated by hospitals themselves, sometimes they are owned and operated by independent private companies who have a contract with the city or hospitals.

And sometimes, especially in bigger cities, ALL of those options exist at the same time.

There’s no one good answer unfortunately for an “American system” because it really depends on what city/state you are in.

2
BrotherbeamOP•

I was sorta expecting that answer. For my case I’m in an Illinois suburb, and we have contracted Ambulance-vans, and our Fire Department maintains a few of the box-on-chassis style Ambulances.

1
blackwe11_ninja•

In my country (Slovakia), ambulances are owned and operated both by private companies and government owned companies, I think there is something like dozen companies doing this. The emergency dispatch center (the one that takes your call when you dial 112) is owned and operated by government.

2
Inside-Finish-2128•

Sometimes it’s run by the county, independent of the fire departments. Sometimes it’s run by the fire department. Sometimes it’s a private company funded somehow for the city or county. Sometimes it’s a two-tier system where the ambulance is staffed as “basic life saving” (BLS) and then a smaller number of advanced life saving (ALS) vehicles (ambulances, squads, fly cars, SUVs, etc) join the BLS unit to augment them to ALS level. Sometimes the primary unit is already ALS.

Sometimes the fire department responds as the BLS provider or first responders.

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[deleted]•

[removed]

1
BrotherbeamOP•

What kind of facilities are those like. Are they adjacent to your hospitals, inside them, or in separate federal buildings, are they separated by state/union territory or just across the whole country?

1
aaronite•

In my province of British Columbia in Canada the ambulance service is directly owned and operated by the province as part of the overall health system.

1