WA Operations Centre
A Coordination Centre (previously referred to as our Operations Centre), staffed by RFDS Operations Coordinators, RFDS retrieval doctors as Clinical Coordinators and a St John Ambulance liaison officer, is located in Perth at Jandakot Airport. The Centre has a full range of telephone, fax, radio and other electronic communications.
More than 40,000 incoming medical and emergency calls are handled each year by the Coordination Centre and distributed to RFDS doctors on a regional basis. On any weekday roughly 10 medical staff are on duty to take transport calls and undertake retrieval flights. At night, calls are distributed to a minimum of 5 doctors. An additional Clinical Coordinator, a senior retrieval doctor, is also located in the Coordination Centre, to oversee transport demands and liaise with receiving and referring hospitals during peaks of activity. A recent addition has been the ambulance liaison position, to help streamline over 14,000 road ambulance tasks which our staff coordinate to match our aeromedical flights.
The Coordination Centre handles in excess of 500 incoming and outgoing calls every day. For each aeromedical task, there are a number of calls to task pilots, flight nurses and doctors, plus calls relating to air strips, fuelling, lighting,liaising with the calling location and arranging road transport links.
The single Coordination Centre ensures prompt single-point of contact and one-stop access to medical advice and aeromedical transport. The use of multiple experienced doctors across the State as part of an extended "virtual" Coordination Centre ensures that most callers speak to a retrieval doctor with a high level of local geographical and logistical knowledge. The system also ensures that multiple doctors are available to handle multiple concurrent emergency calls at the one time.
All calls through the Coordination Centre are voice-logged. When calls are received a few core items of information are obtained, then the caller is switched through to a duty retrieval doctor within approximately 2 minutes. Transport requests from country hospitals must be made by the treating doctor and the patient must be accepted by a medical practitioner at the receiving hospital. In addition, referrals for transport must be authorized by an RFDS medical officer. Three medical practitioners approving any transfer minimizes the likelihood of unnecessary transfers being made.
Communications with aircraft occurs using aviation radio bands (mostly VHF through repeaters across the State), or satellite phones installed in each aircraft. Incoming and outgoing calls can be conferenced or switched through to internal or external phone numbers. Our WAN (wide area network) across the State provides direct links to each Base including monitoring of equipment (such as drug fridges), security cameras and remote control of some radio communications. A 'live view' of outstanding retrieval requests and those already underway is available across our network to clinical staff.