Department of Health

Emergency referral and retrieval for pregnant women, newborns and children

Key messages

  • Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval (PIPER) provides advice, referral and transport for pregnant women, newborns and children with serious or life-threatening conditions.
  • PIPER is a single point of contact for newborn and perinatal transport services in Victoria.
  • This service ensures women, newborns and children get the right level of care in an emergency, and helps return them to care closer to home when they improve.

Pregnant women, newborns and children with serious or life-threatening medical problems need highly specialised care.

Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval

In emergency situations, Paediatric Infant Perinatal Emergency Retrieval (PIPER) coordinates and facilitates expert advice, referral and transport to the specialist maternity, newborn and paediatric services in Victoria.

PIPER is an integrated service for:

  • newborn emergency transport that provides statewide and interstate transfer of babies, including time-critical transport, non-urgent and back-transfers to special care nursery, and transfers for babies who need special investigations
  • perinatal emergency referrals that provides statewide expert clinical advice about perinatal emergencies, and facilitates the transport of women and their babies to clinical services by Ambulance Victoria
  • paediatric emergency transport that provides statewide and interstate transfers of critically ill children to clinically appropriate services.

Reviewed 02 October 2023

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More information

Contact details

Maternity and Newborn Program Department of Health & Human Services

maternity@dhhs.vic.gov.au
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