Since the beginning, ambulances have not been just for emergencies. Picking up a patient to take him or her to the hospital is only one of the uses of an ambulance. Ambulances can also move—and have always moved—the patients from point to point-in non-emergency situations. Some of the oldest ambulance services today got their start doing something other than responding to calls for help. Many were based in a particular hospital and were used to moving patients to and from other hospitals, which is still the most common use of an ambulance.

Today, this type of transport is called an inter-facility transfer (IFT). Over time, some of the ambulances evolved to provide specialty care themselves. There are ambulances for critical care patients that use a nurse instead of (or in addition to) a paramedic. There are neonatal ambulances that are designed to transport pre-term babies. Some ambulances have teams of caregivers that combine nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, nurse practitioners, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, or all of these.