[Emergency medical services for the elderly: present fact and future challenge].

The Tokyo Fire Department (TFD) ambulance units are transporting more people than ever before with elderly patients on the increase. The TFD then set up the Emergency Telephone Consultation Center in 2007 to help citizens properly use EMS services, asking non-emergency cases to go to the hospital by themselves or sending the ambulance to serious cases. Transportation of all "home patients" (receiving medical services at home, not in the hospital) by fire department ambulances would leave really serious patients behind. Consequently, it is important to make the most of private sector ambulances and hospital ones. For community life safety, making the most of local resources, as well as the fire department-hospital cooperation, is much more needed now.