What we do - Rural Ambulance Victoria

Rural Ambulance Victoria (RAV) is responsible for pre-hospital emergency care and transport for the 1.4 million people living and working in rural Victoria – an area of more than 215,000 square kilometres extending from the boundaries of Melbourne to the borders with South Australia and New South Wales.

RAV provides pre-hospital patient treatment in emergency and non-emergency situations and ambulance transport services along with various public education services. As such, RAV is a major contributor to minimising risk in rural communities through the provision of high quality, timely and cost effective ambulance services.

RAV is enabled and given legal standing through The Ambulance Services Act 1986, which specifically sets out the following objectives:

To respond rapidly to requests for help in a medical emergency;
To provide specialised medical skills to maintain life and to reduce injuries in emergency situations and while moving people requiring those skills;
To provide specialised transport facilities to move people requiring emergency medical treatment;
To provide services for which specialised medical or transport skills are necessary; and
To foster public education in first aid.

RAV’s workforce has grown to 1,340 comprising approximately 1,176 operational staff, including 349 Ambulance Community Officers and 450 Community Emergency Response Team members, utilising a fleet of 307 front line ambulance vehicles and 99 operational support vehicles.

Staff are dispersed across rural Victoria operating from 144 response locations (122 Ambulance Branches and 22 Community Emergency Response Teams), five Regions incorporating 14 Districts, five Communications Centres, 12 Workshops and a centralised Head Office located in Ballarat.

RAV's five Regions are Barwon South West, Grampians, Loddon Mallee, Hume and Gippsland.

Each of the five Regions is managed by a Regional General Manager, with the five Regions further broken down into Districts, with each District overseen by a Group Manager .

The management structure of Rural Ambulance Victoria comprises a Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer and an Executive Team consisting of: Regional General Managers from RAV's five Regions, General Manager Logistics, General Manager Clinical Governance, General Manager Corporate Services, General Manager Human Resources, General Manager Information Services, General Manager Corporate Affairs, and Corporate Secretary.

Rural Ambulance Victoria identifies the following objectives as its commitment to its customers and to its staff and in terms of its own inherent responsibilities in the achievement of its vision and policy. Those objectives are:

To market Rural Ambulance Victoria to the community to promote ease of access, knowledge of the services available and promotion of public education in first aid.
To encourage active community input into the development of Rural Ambulance Victoria.
To monitor customer satisfaction.
To provide a mechanism for responding to customer compliments and complaints.
To foster public education in first aid.
To provide appropriate, up to date training for ambulance staff.
To work where appropriate with other providers to enhance the concept of community safety in rural Victoria.