BC Emergency Health Services provides the following types of patient transfer:
- Pre-booked inter-facility patient transfers that require the presence of a primary care paramedic, or higher licensing level.
- Critical care transfers between health care facilities for critically ill or injured patients who need highly specialized care from a paramedic, or who are travelling long distances.
- Critical care transfers for pediatric, neo-natal and high-risk obstetrics patients.
Health care professionals who need to book an inter-facility patient transfer should call Patient Transfer Services at 604-215-5911 (toll free: 1-866-233-2337).
Please do not arrange the details of patient transfers before calling Patient Transfer Services.
BC Patient Transfer Services triages all transfers and consults with both the sending and receiving facility in each case. These conferences are crucial to getting patients to the right location as quickly as possible. Patient transfers cannot be booked without going through the conference process. The conference allows BCEHS to triage transfer calls.
Emergency response vehicles are used for transfers, so transfers are triaged along with 9-1-1 emergency responses. BCEHS uses a provincial Medical Priority Dispatch System for a very thorough process of triaging 9-1-1 calls.
