Another add if I may concerning the 'staging' or 'waiting for police' as brought up by Gill. Again with the perspective of Los Angeles. The private ambulance companies out here are held under a very tight thumb by the likes of L.A.County Fire. Further still, if a particular company has a 911 contract with a city, the EMT's must also by abide the further restraining points of that contract. In one particular city, the private EMT's were always 'staged' at various locations, ensuring that even without lights and sirens, the crew could reach any address in 6 to 8 minutes. This meant that in most cases, they were beating the fire department medics to any call dispatched. The FD didn't like this and made it very clear that any ambulance responding to a call - even if made 'official' by the FD dispatcher - had to WAIT AROUND THE CORNER until the first fire vehicles made it to the scene. That's right; the ambulance crew could be sitting around the corner from a medical emergency - and had to wait - sometimes 3, 4 or 5 minutes for the medics to arrive. I realize our system over here is different, but you get the gist. So as it was ineveitable, a crew was called to an address for an unresponsive child. Having already been through more sh*t storms with the FD than they cared to recount, they pulled up two houses away to wait. In no time, a police care sped up to the house, the officer got out, ran into the house and immediately re-appeared carrying a small child in his arms. He threw the child onto the front seat of his cruiser and sped of to the nearest ER. He could be seen trying to do chest compressions as he was driving. The result was another major sh*t storm between the FD and police regarding who has control of a medical aid call. A training video was produced and the story made all the front pages of the local papers. Unfortunately no one ever heard about the FD's rule that private EMT's were not allowed to arrive before fire. This is still the normal operating standard amongst cities that utilize private ambulance companies for medical transport of 911 patients. This isn't about safety, this is about the fragile egos of the fire slugs being bruised by the more efficient privates.