The Sanität of Schutz & Rettung Zürich is the city’s public emergency medical service and operates as part of an integrated municipal system that also includes fire services, civil protection, and the central dispatch center. It is responsible for providing 24/7 emergency medical care, responding to calls via the national emergency number 144, and coordinating ambulance and emergency physician deployments. In addition to urgent emergency responses, it also handles planned patient transport services between healthcare facilities. The organisation covers not only the city of Zürich but also the airport and several surrounding municipalities, ensuring broad regional coverage. Its structure emphasizes fast response times, professional paramedic staffing, and close coordination with other emergency services. This integrated model allows efficient handling of both everyday emergencies and larger incidents or events. For more details visit. This insight reports on the number of deployments and rescue response times of the Sanität of Schutz & Rettung Zürich.

In 2025, the Sanität of Schutz & Rettung Zürich recorded a total of 41,328 deployments, as shown in Table 1. This included 36,514 EMS missions, with 26,365 occurring within the city and 10,149 outside. The service also conducted 4,814 non-emergency patient transfers and responded to 141,529 emergency calls via the 144 number. Emergency physicians were involved in 2,884 missions. While a direct year-on-year comparison is not available in the provided data, these figures represent the operational volume for the year.

Emergency services in Switzerland are required to meet the national Hilfsfrist (response time) standard, set by the Interverband Rettungswesen (IVR), which mandates that rescue services must arrive on scene within 15 minutes of receiving an alarm for Priority 1 (P1) life-threatening emergencies. This target must be met in at least 90% of cases. Figures 1 shows the map response time by community, figures 2 to 4 show the evolution of response times over time. Overall, Zürich shows excellent response times, with 97.5% of missions meeting the 15-minute target in 2025, significantly exceeding the national standard. Furthermore, 84.5% of responses were achieved within 10 minutes. Among city districts, Kreis 4, Kreis 5, and Kreis 9 demonstrated the highest consistent performance, each maintaining an average compliance rate above 96.8% for the 15-minute target.