According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 130 million visits are made to emergency departments each year. Often when a child is admitted under critical care, they may need specialized care that a general or adult hospital cannot provide. When the need for infant, child or maternal specialty care arrives, the Transport Program at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital Long Beach is here to help.

Miller Children’s combines multiple specialties – pediatric intensive care, neonatal intensive care and high-risk maternal-fetal care – to create a comprehensive Transport Program. The program brings patients from referring hospitals by ambulance or helicopter to one of its specialized units, such as the Cherese Mari Laulhere Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), where there are in-house board eligible/certified pediatric hospitals, intensivists, neonatologists, maternal fetal medicine specialists and anesthesiologists available 24/7 to deliver the highest quality care.

Unique for a Transport Program, Miller Children’s has the ability to bring expectant mothers in high-risk or emergency situations from surrounding hospitals to the Perinatal Special Care Unit at the BirthCare Center at Miller Children’s, which is located down the hall from Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). This means that expecting moms who are in critical or delicate condition can give birth at Miller Children’s and have their newborn child receive specialized neonatal care – under one roof.

There are only three similar transport programs in Southern California, the closest located in Orange County. Between the three, Miller Children’s is the only hospital that can provide specialized care for both mom and baby under one roof.

With this specialized program comes a specialized care team, consisting of dedicated transport physicians, respiratory care practitioners and registered nurses. The registered nurses receive advanced training that allows them to provide care for infants, adolescents, teens and pregnant mothers.

The team, who is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, coordinates all aspects of the transfer – securing the ambulance, providing quality and specialized care during transport and arriving with the patient to Miller Children’s.

Together, they are able to give expert pediatric, neonatal and maternal care while en route to Miller Children’s. This can make a big difference to patients, especially when compared to a general ambulance company, whose paramedics are not required to have specialty training and who may only be equipped to keep a patient sustained in their critical condition. The Transport Program care team, on the other hand, can provide interventional care that improves and may ultimately save a patient’s life.

Using a patient and family centered care approach, when retrieving patients from referring hospitals, the care team takes times to meet the patient and their family, explain their roles in the patient’s care, and answer any questions. In an effort to help decrease anxieties, patients are able to watch movies during transport, distracting them from what can be a scary experience.

“On the transport team, we’ve become experts at giving emergency care and we’re very calm in emergency situations,” explains Rachel Sriwarodom, RN, BSN, Transport Program, Miller Children’s. “Although it’s great to be as prepared as we are, it’s also important to remember that there’s a child or an expectant mother on the other end that is scared and doesn’t understand what’s going on – and a family that feels the same way.”

Every year, more than 1,200 infants, children, teens and expectant mothers are transported from hospitals all across Southern California to Miller Children’s to receive specialized care. At Miller Children’s, transport is more than just a journey – it’s a specialty.

To learn more about the Transport Program at Miller Children’s, visit MillerChildrens.org/TransportProgram.