Highlighting the Transfer Center: Who they are, what they do

When patients in other area hospitals need our specialty care, how do they get here? Via, the Transfer Center team!

Did you know, UC Davis Medical Center accepts inbound, inter-facility transfers from all over Northern California? UC Davis Health is the only Level I Adult and Pediatric Trauma Center north of Sacramento to the Oregon border and east to the Nevada border. UC Davis Health is also a certified stroke center and burn center.

UC Davis Health thus serves a safety net for our Northern California community hospitals that may need our specialty and subspecialty care.

We have strong partnerships with our community hospitals and robust networks. It is in this way that we participate in a regionalized system of care. UC Davis Health makes our world-class care available to patients in outside hospitals, and this is coordinated and accomplished via the UC Davis Transfer Center.

Our Transfer Center is part of the Patient Flow Department. It is staffed with registered nurses with a mix of critical care and case management experience. When community members need a higher level of care and turn to UC Davis Health, it is the Transfer Center team that assists.

Via the Transfer Center, UC Davis Health also provides consultations to community physicians when they need our expertise to direct care for patients with conditions or injuries that may require specialty consideration.

Why is this important?

There are approximately 1.5 million inter-facility transfers in the United States, of which, about 650,000 are critical transfers. UC Davis Medical Center is a literal lifeline for patients who live in rural or underserved areas without hospitals that provide advanced trauma and critical care. Nine percent of rural patients in the U.S. undergo inter-facility transfers each year. Fifty percent of UC Davis Health’s stroke patients treated came through the Transfer Center.

In quantifying the assistance sought by area hospitals, the UC Davis Transfer Center managed 21,000 calls last year alone.

"We are especially proud of our support to military families, whose children transport long distance from bases located in places such as Guam and Hawaii as they travel to their destination hospitals on the East Coast," said Andrea Shook, nurse case manager for the Transfer Center. "These medically-fragile children will travel via medical transport but stop at UC Davis Health for care and respite during their long-haul transports. Our Pediatric Intensive Care Team, along with the Transfer Center, could not be more honored to support these pediatric patients in this way."

Our consultations process also provides an opportunity for patients in outlying community hospitals to receive expert guidance, although they may not necessarily need transfer. Their physicians can connect with on-call UC Davis Health physicians for guidance and support.

UC Davis Health can provide that support via our 56 admitting services and experts in more than 150 areas of health care.

A few of our specialties include cancer, cardiology, diabetes & endocrinology, ENT, geriatrics, neurology & neurosurgery, obstetrics & gynecology, pulmonology & lung surgery, infectious disease and more.

How does the transfer process work?

Most calls come through the transfer center via emergency room physicians who identify the need for a higher level of care or guidance for their overall plan of care related to specialty care that, locally, they do not provide. Calls may also originate through an inpatient’s admitting physician, who later identify the need to escalate care.

The Transfer Center team then works with capacity management consisting of a Nursing House Supervisor, Bed Planning, the Medical Officer of the Day, and the Pediatric Administrator of the Day to assess our capacity to accept patients.

The Transfer Center can then facilitate discussions between the referring facilities and our accepting physicians regarding the patients’ exact need and level of care. Our admitting units are then notified of incoming transfer via our electronic bed boards and queues.

If you need to contact the UC Davis Health Transfer Center, stop by the North Addition Office Building, Room 2014, or call (916) 734-8200.