Federal obligations in ambulance services (NAICS 621910)

Ambulance-service dollars on the contract books

USAspending records $1,276,503,973.44 obligated on actions whose NAICS is 621910. That code covers establishments that provide ambulance services, including ground and air ambulance in the Census definition. On a federal award it typically marks patient transport, medical evacuation support, or contracted ambulance coverage for a facility or region. The total is the sum of those tagged contract obligations. It is not a national EMS budget and it is not Medicare reimbursement, which travels through different payment systems.

Obligation versus outlay matters for this code because ambulance work is often billed as services over time. An agency can obligate a year of coverage in one action and pay invoices monthly. The $1,276,503,973.44 tells you how much has been committed on 621910 contracts in this extract, not how much has already been disbursed. If a later modification reduces the ceiling, the live table can fall without rewriting the fact that this industry has been a billion-dollar-plus contract category.

3,863 awards: a high-count medical transport code

With 3,863 awards against $1,276,503,973.44, the simple average is about $330,000 per action. That is a mid-size services pattern: large enough that many awards are full coverage contracts, small enough that the set is not three mega-awards. Repeat orders, option years, and geographically split contracts all increase award count without each row being a brand-new national program. The industry page is where you see whether those 3,863 rows cluster in a few agencies or spread across civilian and defense buyers.

This guide cites only the packet totals. It does not name prime vendors, states, or fiscal years that are absent from the facts object. Those dimensions, when present in the hub tables, come from the same USAspending contract feed and should be read there rather than inferred from the two headline numbers.

What 621910 includes and what it leaves out

Ambulance services as a NAICS category is narrower than “all emergency medical care.” Physician offices, hospitals, and other ambulatory health codes sit elsewhere. A contract for hospital staffing that happens to include some transport may be coded to a hospital or physician NAICS. Conversely, a dedicated ambulance contractor should land in 621910 even if some trips are inter-facility rather than 911. The $1,276,503,973.44 is the tagged slice, not every federal dollar that ever moved a patient.

Assistance awards may not carry NAICS. A grant to a local EMS agency can be a large public-health outlay and still never appear in this industry total. Readers who only look at 621910 will undercount grant-funded ambulance capacity. Pair this page with program or agency views if the question is “all federal EMS money,” not “contract obligations coded ambulance services.”

A complete citation of this industry is $1,276,503,973.44 in USAspending contract obligations tagged to NAICS 621910, ambulance services, on 3,863 awards. Anything less—dropping the NAICS, dropping the word obligations, or dropping the contract-only universe—overstates what the extract contains. The packet facts do not include a fiscal year, so this guide does not invent one. Live tables on the industry hub can move when USAspending posts modifications; the harvested pair remains $1,276,503,973.44 and 3,863.

Using the industry hub next to this guide

The ambulance-services industry page holds the award inventory behind the $1,276,503,973.44 and the 3,863 count. Sort and filter there. This overlay exists so the hub is not a silent table: it states the source (USAspending.gov), the unit (obligations), and the coding caveat (assistance often lacks NAICS). Do not treat the two pages as two different dollar amounts; they describe the same extract.

Classification errors are expected at the margin. Vendors that straddle Medicare claims, hospital staffing, and physician-office mental-health contracts may land in 621910 on some actions and in a neighbor on others. Offices of mental-health physicians (621112) sit in the same health sector but measure a different establishment type. The public-record stance is to keep $1,276,503,973.44 attached to 621910 as tagged, then sort the 3,863 rows by amount to see whether a few coverage vehicles dominate. Re-tagging the extract by hand is out of scope for this overlay.

Classification caveats for medical transport awards

Contracting officers pick a NAICS that best matches the principal purpose of the award. Mixed medical-logistics contracts can drift into transportation or other health-care codes. Air ambulance versus ground ambulance is not a separate six-digit split on this page; both can sit under 621910 depending on how the vendor is classified. The 3,863 awards should be read as “coded ambulance services,” not as a census of every stretcher movement the government has paid for.

Citing 621910 without mixing payment systems

Award count interprets the buying pattern. 3,863 actions producing $1,276,503,973.44 is mid-count medical transport vehicles across many sites, with about $330,000 per action as the simple average. That average hides mix: modifications, options, and delivery orders all increment count. 3,863 is not a count of unique companies and not a count of physical units. Use the hub amount sort to see whether a few large rows plus a long tail make up most of the tagged total.

Outlays remain a separate USAspending concept. An agency can obligate $1,276,503,973.44 across 3,863 tagged ambulance services actions and pay on a different calendar. De-obligations after cancellations reduce the obligation ledger; they do not rewrite the fact that this NAICS has been a large tagged category in the harvest. Assistance without NAICS still sits outside even when the real-world activity looks similar. Program pages answer the grant question; this page answers the tagged-contract question.

Internal links on this file point only to the ambulance services industry page and the all-industries directory. Those are the packet hrefs. Neighboring industry codes mentioned in prose are classification context only. Source note, copied from the packet: NAICS from USAspending contract awards. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS. The overlay’s job is to state $1,276,503,973.44, 3,863, the obligation unit, and the boundary around Medicare claims, hospital staffing, and physician-office mental-health contracts.

Questions

How much federal contract spending is coded to ambulance services?

NAICS 621910 shows $1,276,503,973.44 in obligations on 3,863 USAspending contract awards. That is not an outlay total and not a count of 911 calls. Grants without a NAICS code are excluded even if they support EMS. Quote it as USAspending contract obligations tagged to NAICS 621910, not as cash outlays. Assistance awards may not carry NAICS, so grants remain outside the 3,863-award extract behind $1,276,503,973.44.

Does NAICS 621910 include air ambulance?

The Census industry covers ambulance services, which can include air and ground depending on the establishment. This page does not split the $1,276,503,973.44 by mode because the packet facts do not. Award descriptions on the industry hub are the place to inspect individual actions.

Why are there 3,863 awards for roughly $1.28 billion?

Ambulance coverage is often bought as many regional or facility-level service contracts rather than one national buy. 3,863 actions against $1,276,503,973.44 averages about $330,000 per award. Option years and modifications also add rows. The hub tables show the actual size mix.

Are Medicare ambulance payments in this total?

No. These figures are federal contract obligations from USAspending tagged to NAICS 621910. Medicare fee-for-service payments are a different administrative stream and are not this $1,276,503,973.44. Do not add the two without a separate, documented crosswalk. This industry guide covers tagged contracts only: $1,276,503,973.44 obligated on 3,863 ambulance services awards in USAspending. Outlays are a different field; assistance without NAICS is a different award type.