The Prague Emergency Medical Service is an organization funded by the City of Prague. Thanks to its long history, it is the one of the oldest institution of its kind in Europe, having celebrated the 160th anniversary on 8 December 2017.
Our main task is providing specialized pre-hospital emergency medical care. Emergency calls from the entire territory of Prague are accepted continuously at the toll-free number 155. All activities are managed by the Medical Operations Center, where operators receive over 255,000 emergency calls per year.
Specialized pre-hospital emergency care is provided by rapid response vehicles (RRV – emergency vehicles carrying a physician) and advanced life support vehicles (ALS – large ambulance vehicles comprising a paramedic and a driver/rescue person). They operate in the rendezvous system, where a physician works together with an ALS crew in situations when a patient’s life or health is in serious danger. This approach not only reduces the response time to a patient, but it also allows deploying physicians in an optimal manner because in the vast majority of cases (approximately 80%), patients are transported to a medical facility without the need for a physician assistance during the transport. This way, doctors are not unnecessarily tied up and can be dispatched to assist other patients.
Our rescue staff currently uses about 40 ambulance vehicles and 1 helicopter. We have 32 – 35 ALS vehicles and 5 RRV automobiles. In addition to standard ambulances, we have unique vehicles, such as the GOLEM and ATEGO trailer module designed for responding to large-scale emergencies and exceptional situations and an „XXL ambulance“ capable of transporting patients who are obese, wheelchair-bound, or confined to bed and requiring life support equipment.
Rescue teams respond to emergency calls from 21 stations that are strategically situated in various parts of Prague to ensure the availability of pre-hospital care within 15 minutes. According to long-term statistics, our response times vary between seven to eight minutes and amount to less than seven minutes in the most serious emergencies. Every day, we attend about 300 patients, which translates into more than 100.000 ambulance runs per year.
Our 19th location is the Air Emergency Medical Service base situated in the Police Aviation Depertmemt at the Ruzyně Airport. This is a supplementary service to our ground teams, and it is used not only in Prague, but also all over Central Bohemia and during the night throughout the whole Czech Republic.
In addition to pre-hospital emergency care, we provide medical assistance, carry out secondary transports between medical facilities, repatriate patients from abroad and running medical educational center as well.