One of the most important health care services is emergency medical service as it plays a vital role in saving people's lives and reducing the rate of mortality and morbidity. Over the last years, many review papers have discussed emergency medical services (EMS) location problems, however, only few review papers consider the full range of EMS systems. This review paper tries to fill this gap. Our review introduces the concept of emergency care pathway following the current trend in health care systems, i.e., shifting the central role from health care providers to patients. Considering the emergency care pathway, we provide a broad literature review and analysis in order to identify emerging challenges for future research.@en