page_title: Emergency medical services in Canada
section_title: Air Ambulance
hierarchical_section_title: Emergency medical services in Canada / Organization / Air Ambulance
caption_attribution_description: English: AugustaWestland AW139 registration C-GYNL belonging to Ornge at their Ottawa base.
context_page_description: Emergency medical services in Canada are the responsibility of each Canadian province or territory. The services, including both ambulance and paramedic services, may be provided directly by the province, contracted to a private provider, or delegated to local governments, which may in turn create service delivery arrangements with municipal departments, hospitals or private providers. The approach, and the standards, vary considerably between provinces and territories.
context_section_description: Canadian provinces are also served by air ambulance services.  These arrangements may come in a variety of forms, including direct service provision, contracts between private companies and the provincial government, or "brokerage" arrangements in which one private company takes the lead on service provision, perhaps even operating some of their own aircraft and providing dispatch services, but subcontracting many of the operations to smaller air charter services. In some cases, the inter-facility transport of high-acuity patients may be a mix of air-based and ground-based resources. Canada is a vast country, and its sheer size dictates that in many cases a helicopter-based air ambulance service  is impractical as the distances required exceed the flight range of the aircraft. For this reason, the use of fixed wing aircraft is commonplace. In some jurisdictions not all air ambulance calls are emergencies, since distances to tertiary care centres mean that some patients with lower-acuity medical conditions are also flown.
caption: Ontario Air Ambulance operated by Ornge.
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