There is a growing demand for emergency medical services (EMS) and patients are repeatedly transported by ambulance services. For many patients, especially those with chronic disease, there may be better ways of delivering care. We examined the symptom at time of emergency call and the hospital diagnosis for those ambulance users who repeatedly received an ambulance. Repeated use of ambulance services was common and associated with chronic health problems such as chronic respiratory diseases, epilepsy, mental disorders with alcohol abuse and co-morbidity. Alternative methods of caring for many of these patients should be considered. We included 52 533 patients (65 932 emergency ambulance runs). Repeated users constituted 16% of the patients (two-time users 11% and frequent users 5%) and one third of all ambulance runs. Population-based historic cohort study of patients receiving an ambulance after an emergency call between 2011 and 2014.

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