Scottish Ambulance Service

The Scottish Ambulance Service is part of the National Health Service in Scotland, and serves all of Scotland. It is a Special Health Board funded directly by the Scottish Executive Health Department.

The two main functions of the trust are 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 Beechcraft B200C fixed wing aircraft, which provide emergency response and transfers of patients to and from remote areas of Scotland.

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.