The ambulance services market is anticipated to witness a lucrative growth rate in the forthcoming years owing to the increase in number of road accidents, rising prevalence of chronic disease, and growing medical tourism trend.

The key role of all ambulance services is emergency pre-hospital medical care. These services further provide a disciplined as well as organized system, that allows a timely response of qualified health care workers during an emergency.

Earlier, an ambulance was only used for taking patients to hospitals, but now the modern ambulances are equipped with up to date, life-saving equipment and technologies that ensure that patients are provided with emergency services way before reaching the nearby hospital.

Some densely-packed locations across various cities are not reachable to ambulance services due to lack of adequate space for an emergency vehicle in that location. Additionally, some areas might be far off or cannot be reached by a ground ambulance quickly. In such cases, an air ambulance is used for emergency medical assistance for a faster response to places where the air transport service is generally available.

An air ambulance comprises of all the essential medical equipment such as stretchers, medicine, ventilators, and ECG among others. Additionally, a team of medical personnel is also present to help the patient in the best possible way.

Ambulance services market is bifurcated in terms of mode of transportation, services, payer, and end-use.

Based on transportation, the ambulance services market is categorized into water ambulance, ground ambulance, and air ambulance. The ground ambulance segment held a market value of more than $16 billion in 2019. Ground ambulance service is considered more cost-effective, accessible, and available than air and water ambulance services.

With respect to services, the ambulance services market is classified into non-emergency medical services and emergency medical services. The non-emergency medical services held a market share of around 37% in 2019 and will continue to show considerable growth in the coming years. Non-emergency services provide medically necessary, pre-scheduled inter-facility services.

Non-emergency services include transporting patients from laboratory services to the appropriate facilities, or transporting patients having some sort of travelling disabilities in normal vehicles to hospitals and shifting patients from hospital to another hospital.

In terms of end-use, the overall ambulance services market is segmented into home healthcare settings, nursing homes, hospitals, and others. The hospitals end-use segment will witness as CAGR of around 0.5% over the forecast time period. Hospitals require the maximum number of ambulances owing to the growing number of surgeries performed at the hospital settings.