Ambulance Services in Victoria

General conditions/Eligibility criteria: Information for hospitals/Ambulance Victoria

Non-admitted emergency patient funding

Hospitals receiving non-admitted emergency patient funding are listed in the Victoria – Public Hospitals and Mental Health Services Policy and Funding Guidelines.

Clinicians in private practice on hospital premises

When ambulances or non-emergency patient transport services are booked by clinicians working in a private capacity on hospital premises and who are not directly employed by or under contract to the hospital in that capacity, responsibility for fees is as per table: Transports From the Community.

Billing of private patients in private hospitals

Private patients in private hospitals transported by ambulance will be invoiced directly by Ambulance Victoria.

Inter hospital transfers – For Admitted Patients

If a patient is transferred from a public hospital to another hospital (public or private) for medical reasons, the transferring hospital is responsible for the cost of the ambulance, for example a transfer is required because:

• a higher level of care is needed

• the required care cannot be provided

• there is a pre existing arrangement between the transferring hospital and the receiving hospital

• the transfer has been organised by a Retrieval Service - eg ARV.

Where health services that offer critical care services uses private critical care as flexible capacity, the referring health service is fully responsible for the cost of the patient's care (including the cost of ambulance transport) . WEIS revenue can be earned for these patients. DVA clients are subject to separate arrangements.

Where a health service does not offer critical care services and Adult Retrieval Victoria (ARV) is unable to source a public sector bed, ARV is able to transfer the patient into a private critical care bed. ARV is then responsible for the cost of care (including the cost of ambulance transport) while in the private bed and will arrange a transfer into an available public sector bed as soon as possible when it is deemed clinically suitable.

If a general patient initiates a non-emergency transport for social/personal choice reasons, the patient is liable for the cost of the ambulance transfer, for example,

• the patient chooses to move from a public hospital to a private hospital

• the patient chooses to move to another hospital to be closer to family members

• the patient chooses to move to another hospital in order to be treated by preferred physician.

Non admitted patient clinics

The following applies to the authorisation of transport and payment arrangements for patients attending non-admitted clinics (also refer to Hospital circular 02/2008):

• Health services will authorise the use of specialised transports for all new and review patients attending hospital non admitted patient clinics- VAC funded

• Patients are responsible for payment of ambulance transport except in the following circumstances:
  
  
  • TAC, WorkCover and DVA patients will be covered by their respective schemes
    
    
  • Pensioner and concession card holders - For new patients the cost of ambulance transports will be met by AV. For review patients the cost of the ambulance transport will be met by the Health Services. Hospitals will need to invoice AV at the end of each financial year for the cost of transports involving patients’ initial attendance
    
    
  • Ambulance membership subscribers will be covered by the Ambulance Subscription Scheme.

Patients being transported to MBS clinics will be treated the same way as state funded hospital non admitted patient clinics.