New rules governing the provision of emergency medical care will come into force in Kazakhstan on October,13 2026. Under the new arrangements, once an emergency medical team has been dispatched, patients will receive automatic notifications and will be able to track the ambulance in real time, El.kz reports citing an order of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The changes will also affect the methods used to request emergency medical assistance and the procedure for referring calls to mobile teams operated by primary healthcare organisations.
How to Track an Ambulance Online
Under the new rules, emergency medical assistance may be requested through the established emergency number 103, as well as via mobile applications, messaging platforms and chatbots, including through the transmission of geolocation data.
Once an emergency medical team has been assigned, the healthcare organisation will automatically notify the patient that the team has been dispatched. In addition, citizens will be provided with the ability to view the location and movement of the medical team on a map in real time.
For this purpose, emergency medical information systems will interact with geolocation services. The order does not specify the particular applications to be used or the procedure for obtaining access to the tracking map.
Which Calls Will Be Referred to Primary Healthcare Organisations
Another change concerns requests relating to urgent medical conditions that do not pose an immediate threat to the patient’s life. Dispatchers of the emergency medical service will be able to refer such calls to mobile teams operated by primary healthcare organisations (PHC organisations).
Registration of calls for referral to primary healthcare organisations will be carried out from 08:00 to 19:00 on weekdays. On Saturdays, the registration period will run from 08:00 to 12:00.
Mobile teams operated by primary healthcare organisations will respond to calls on weekdays from 08:00 to 20:00. If a request is received on a Sunday or outside the operating hours of PHC organisations, the call will be attended by an emergency medical service team.
Medical personnel will be able to visit patients at their actual place of residence within the service area, regardless of the patient’s registration with or assignment to a particular polyclinic.
How Long Will It Take for an Ambulance to Arrive?
The updated rules also establish response times for medical teams based on the urgency category of the call.
For Category 1 calls, involving an immediate threat to a person’s life, the medical team must arrive within 10 minutes. For Category 2 calls, the maximum response time is 15 minutes, while for Category 3 calls, it is 30 minutes.
For urgent medical conditions that do not pose an immediate threat to life, the response time is up to 60 minutes. The response time is calculated from the moment the medical team receives the call from the dispatcher.
What Else Will Change in the Work of Medical Teams?
The new rules clarify the composition of specialised, paramedic and mobile medical teams. Depending on the type of team, medical assistance will be provided by physicians, paramedics and other appropriately trained healthcare professionals.
To ensure the safety of medical personnel, the rules provide for the use of body-worn video recorders and mobile cameras. These devices are intended to record audio and video of the circumstances in which medical assistance is provided and patients are transported.
The rules also provide for equipping ambulances and other emergency medical vehicles with GPS monitoring systems, enabling the location of medical teams to be monitored.
At the same time, emergency medical assistance will remain free of charge and available around the clock.
