East of England Ambulance Service was created on July 1 2006 after the amalgamation of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance and Paramedic Service NHS Trust, the East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust, and the Essex Ambulance Service NHS Trust. As a result, the present-day service holds responsibility to 5.8 million people and it responds to more than 500,000 emergency calls annually.
Similar with other UK ambulance services, it does not also collect fees from its patients because it is funded through the general tax. It means to say that all patients, all UK citizens can freely enjoy the benefits and services offered by the Service.
In addition to providing emergency health-based services, it also provides “out-of-hours” primary care services, PTS, commercial services and special operations such as air ambulances, emergency planning and hazardous materials incident response.
East of England Ambulance Service currently employs 3,994 staff including 2,516 involved frontline accident and emergency operations. It also has its own in-house driving school. The Service has the following equipments:
- 273 emergency ambulances
- 237 non-emergency ambulances
- 215 marked rapid-response cars
- 25 major incident support vehicles; decontamination equipment, and mobile control rooms
- 110 ambulance stations and response posts
- 3 Health Emergency Operations Centers installed in Bedford, Chelmsford, and Norwich
