(A) Except as may otherwise be provided for in this subchapter, it shall be unlawful for any person to operate, conduct, maintain or otherwise engage in the furnishing of an emergency ambulance service or non-emergency ambulance service within the limits of the city. This includes the drop off of a patient at a hospital or other place for medical attention inside the city with the intention to pick up the same patient for transport back out from the city.
(B) The provisions of division (A) above shall not apply to the following:
(1) The United States government and its agencies, the state, the county or the city;
(2) Persons who operate an ambulance service, including their ambulance vehicles and personnel, from a location or headquarters outside the limits of the city and who are transporting patients from a location outside the limits of the city to a location within the city, or through the city to some other location;
(3) Persons furnishing, at the city’s request, a permitted emergency or non-emergency ambulance service;
(4) Non-emergency vehicles used to provide or make available, on a volunteer or non-profit basis, transportation for routine non-emergency medical examination or treatment; and/or
(5) Any vehicle owned and operated by an industrial facility at industrial sites used for the initial transport or transfer of the unstable urgently sick or injured and ground vehicles at industrial sites used to transport persons at those sites who become sick, injured, wounded or otherwise incapacitated
in the course of their employment from the job site to an appropriate medical facility; provided, however, that, the vehicle is not available for hire or used by the general public except when assisting the local community in disaster situations or like emergencies.
(6) Persons transporting sick or injured during a mass casualty incident that exceeds the capacity of the city’s emergency medical services.
(7) Any vehicle that is owned/leased and operated with hospital staff providing patient care from a hospital site including free-standing emergency room within the city and used for the transport of a critically sick or injured patient to a higher level of care at another hospital that is owned and operated under the same name as the transferring hospital or free-standing emergency room; provided, however, the vehicle is not available for hire or use by the general public. This section shall not be construed as permitted by the city to perform patient pickup or operate in the city for any other purpose.
(C) The City Commission may contract for the provision of sole provider of ambulance services for emergency medical services and/or non-emergency transport services. If a sole provider of ambulance services is granted, it shall be unlawful for any person, firm or organization to provide ambulance service within the city or to provide point-to-point transport services to and from health care facilities, except as hereinabove provided in division (B) above.
(1998 Code, § 46-33) (Ord. 98-64, passed 12-16-1998; Ord. 14-11, passed 5-21-2014; Ord. 2022-12, passed 7-6-2022)
Penalty, see § 35.99