In England, urgent and emergency healthcare and patient transport services are provided by 11 regionally-based ambulance services, with separate arrangements for the Isle of Wight. In 2009-10, the cost of ambulance services was £1.9 billion, of which around £1.5 billion was for urgent and emergency services.
In 2009-10, 7.9 million emergency ‘999’ calls were received by the ambulance service, which resulted in 6.4 million ambulance incidents and 4.7 million emergency or urgent patient journeys. The number of emergency or urgent calls that the ambulance service receives has increased by about 4 per cent each year since 2007-08.
