Department of Health

Critical care patient transfers

Key messages

  • Patients may need to be transferred to hospitals that provide specialist services and higher levels of care, including intensive care.
  • Victoria has two retrieval services - Adult Retrieval Victoria and Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval - that arrange inter-hospital transfers for critically ill patients as required.

Patients may need to be transferred to hospitals that provide specialist services and higher levels of care, including intensive care.

Retrieval services facilitate the timely transfer of patients and provide expert advice and clinical guidance to health service staff. Well-coordinated and appropriately used retrieval services are integral to the outcomes of time-critical patients requiring transfer.

The two retrieval services in Victoria are Adult Retrieval Victoria and Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval.

Adult Retrieval Victoria

Adult Retrieval Victoria, a business unit of Ambulance Victoria, is a single contact point for major trauma advice (adult and paediatric), adult critical care advice, critical care bed access, and retrieval of critical care adult patients statewide.

Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval

Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval (PIPER) is a statewide 24-hour service that provides emergency referral and retrieval services for high-risk pregnant women, babies and children.

Downloads

Time critical defined transfer guidelines
docx 44.44 KB
Cardiac Defined Transfer Guidelines
pdf 77.81 KB
Neurosurgical Defined Transfer Guidelines
pdf 51.49 KB
Ten years of intensive care in Victoria 2001-02 to 2010-11
pdf 2.97 MB

Reviewed 14 September 2023

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Contact details

GPO Box 4541, Melbourne VIC 3001

Acute Inpatient and Specialist Clinics Program Department of Health & Human Services

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