Emergency treatment

Hi everyone I just had a quite rudimentary question -- if you are in an emergency situation and call 999 for an ambulance, must the ambulance send you to a public hospital? Or is private hospital also possible?


The reason I'm asking, is that one of my friends recently had an injury and called 999 and sent to QMH. It turned out to be quite a grating experience -- long waiting at the A&E department, rough handling by the nurses, and, when he wanted to be transferred to a private hospital for follow-ups, he was told that it wouls take weeks to get his medical record out of the public system.


So I was wondering whether, in the case of an emergency, you could ask the ambulance to send you to a private hospital instead.


Thanks a lot!