page_title: Ambulance
section_title: Costs
hierarchical_section_title: Ambulance / Costs
caption_attribution_description: An ambulance and its crew in Modena, Italy.
context_page_description: An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals. Typically, out-of-hospital medical care is provided to the patient.
  Ambulances are used to respond to medical emergencies by emergency medical services. For this purpose, they are generally equipped with flashing warning lights and sirens. They can rapidly transport paramedics and other first responders to the scene, carry equipment for administering emergency care and transport patients to hospital or other definitive care. Most ambulances use a design based on vans or pick-up trucks. Others take the form of motorcycles, cars, buses, aircraft and boats.
  Generally, vehicles count as an ambulance if they can transport patients. However, it varies by jurisdiction as to whether a non-emergency patient transport vehicle is counted as an ambulance. These vehicles are not usually equipped with life-support equipment, and are usually crewed by staff with fewer qualifications than the crew of emergency ambulances. Conversely, EMS agencies may also have emergency response vehicles that cannot transport patients.
context_section_description: The cost of an ambulance ride may be paid for from several sources, and this will depend on the local situation type of service being provided, by whom, and to whom.
  Government-funded service – The full or the majority of the cost of transport by ambulance is borne by the local, regional, or national government (through their normal taxation).
  Privately funded service – Transport by ambulance is paid for by the patient themselves, or through their insurance company. This may be at the point of care (i.e. payment or guarantee must be made before treatment or transport), although this may be an issue with critically injured patients, unable to provide such details, or via a system of billing later on.
  Charity-funded service – Transport by ambulance may be provided free of charge to patients by a charity, although donations may be sought for services received.
  Hospital-funded service – Hospitals may provide the ambulance transport free of charge, on the condition that patients use the hospital's services (which they may have to pay for).
caption: A volunteer ambulance crew in Modena, Italy
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