Scottish Ambulance Service

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Scottish Ambulance Service serves all of Scotland and is a special health board funded directly by the Scottish Executive Health Department. It serves two main functions - the provision of an accident and emergency service to respond to 999 calls and the non-Emergency Service, which performs the role of taking patients to and from their hospital appointments.

The national headquarters are in Edinburgh and there are six divisions within the Service, namely:

• North West - (area HQ - Inverness)
• North East - (area HQ - Aberdeen)
• East Central - (area HQ - Dundee)
• South East - (area HQ - Edinburgh)
• West Central - (area HQ - Glasgow)
• South West - (area HQ - Ayr)

The service has the only publicly-funded "Air Wing" in the U.K. Operated under contract by Gama Aviation. The fleet consists of two Eurocopter EC-135 helicopters and two Beech King Air 200c fixed wing aircraft, which provide emergency response and transfers of patients to and from remote areas of Scotland.

[edit] Facts and figures

In 2005, the service:

• Responded to 520,463 accident and emergency incidents
• Carried out 2,214,101 non-emergency patient journeys
• Flew 2938 air ambulance missions
• In 2005/06, the average response time to life threatening calls throughout Scotland was 8.4 minutes.
• The service employs 3192 staff, of which 155 are in management and administration and 12 are board members.

[edit] See also

• List of ambulance services in the United Kingdom
• National Health Service

[edit] External links

• Scottish Ambulance Service Official website
• Unofficial Site Very informative website, includes a section on the history of the Service
• Scottish Air Ambulance units - G-SASD : G-SASC : G-SASB : G-SASA