AMBULANCE SERVICE SYSTEMS IN THE U.S.
According to the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, the breakdown of ambulance service systems in the U.S. includes:
Fire department with cross-trained EMS personnel: 40%
Fire department with separate EMS personnel: 9%
Government or third service: 14.5%
Private company: 18%
Hospital-based service: 7%
Other: 8%
Public utility model: 2%
Police department with cross-trained EMS personnel: 0.5%
Police department with separate EMS personnel: 1%
As long as there is legal privatized medicine and legal privatized health insurance, there is an incentive and market for legal privatized emt service.
Private for profit services have a main goal of profiting off of the service they provide with a secondary goal of serving their clients. Public services have a main goal of effectively serving the public with a secondary goal of using the entire budget effectively without going over. Because of that, the two classes of EMT service will make different large scale decisions affecting patients and employees, that lead to vastly different outcomes for the people using these services.
