Audit of neonatal intensive care transport.

Although in utero transfer is the safest option,1 2 provided the mother's condition allows, many newborn infants are still transferred from their hospital of birth to another hospital to receive intensive care. There have been audits of the transfer of both adults34 and older children5 to intensive care units in the United Kingdom but there has been no published audit of the work of a neonatal 'flying squad'. Such audits have been carried out in the United States," but these data cannot be extrapolated to the United Kingdom because of the different organisation of perinatal care and the greater distances involved in the United States. This type of audit can provide important information for a unit wishing to start a transport team, for staff serving on the call-outs, for purchasers and providers negotiating contracts, and for regional authorities trying to rationalise local agreements in order to avoid expensive duplication of resources in response to market forces. We report an analysis of the work of our neonatal transport team in collecting sick infants over a recent 19 month period and discuss the clinical and cost implications.