Ambulance services and on-call rotations

In Belgium, 106 organisations concluded an ‘Ambulance service for emergency medical services’ agreement with the FPS HFCSE on 18/05/2021[1]. In this agreement, services commit to being available at agreed times.

Only services that have concluded an agreement can be dispatched by an emergency centre. Having such an agreement is also a condition for obtaining a grant from the FPS HFCSE. Non-urgent patient transport is provided by services without an agreement or their ambulances can be used as reserve vehicles.

Based on the agreement, one or more on-call rotations are manned by two paramedics, who can drive out to a patient at the emergency centre’s request. In Belgium, there were 417 on-call staff for both an ambulance (393) and a Paramedical Intervention Team (24) (see further) on 01/01/2021[2],[3].

• Most on-call rotations have an on-call service where the paramedics are on duty at the departure point. These on-call services have a rest area. This is also known as an ‘accommodated’ on-call rotation.

• A number of on-call rotations have an on-call service where the paramedics are on duty at home and go to the departure point in the event of a call. This is known as an ‘unaccommodated’ on-call rotation.

 NUMBER ON-CALL ROTATIONS FOR AMBULANCES AND PIT FUNCTIONS BY TYPE (01/01/2021)

Learn more about ambulance services: www.health.belgium.be

^{[1]Source: Department of Urgent Aid, FPS HFCSE}

^{[2]Source: Department of Urgent Aid, FPS HFCSE}

^{[3] On-call rotations as discussed above are only organised for ambulances and Paramedical Intervention Teams. For this reason, no data on the MUG/SMUR functions has been incorporated here.}