The State Health Emergency Arrangements are an array of operational response plans, protocols and guides. They seek to deliver safe, effective and coordinated management of all health emergencies or emergencies with health impacts, across Victoria.
What is a health emergency?
A health emergency is an emerging, imminent or actual threat to the health and wellbeing of the Victorian community. It requires a significant and coordinated effort from the emergency and health system to manage.
This relates to the following scenarios:
- health emergencies for which the Victorian Department of Health is the control agency
- emergencies with health risks or consequences for which Department of Health is a support agency.
State health emergency arrangements
This doctrine comprises of the State Emergency Management Plan Health Emergency Sub-Plan and its subordinate operational response plans, protocols and guidelines.
State Emergency Management Plan – Health Emergency Sub-Plan
The HESP outlines the arrangements and roles and responsibilities for managing health emergencies and emergencies with health impacts in Victoria. It provides guidance on mitigation, planning, response, relief and recovery.
Who should use this plan?
The HESP is used by Victorian Government departments, agencies, and other organisations within the state’s health and emergency management sectors who have a role in managing emergencies.
Community service organisations may also find the contents of this plan informative to help prepare for, respond to and recover from health emergencies.
The HESP is a sub-plan to the State Emergency Management .
This suite of documents (previously known as State Health Response Arrangements or SHERA) are due to be reviewed to ensure alignment with HESP.
Operational response plans and policies
| Documents | Description |
|---|---|
| Victorian Medical Assistance Team Policy | Describes the authorising environment, resilience activity, deployment arrangements, response and mobilisation at incident level for VMAT operations. The policy specifies the health services nominated to maintain VMAT capability. |
Guides
| Documents | Description |
|---|---|
| Code Brown guidelines | Provides information to assist health services prepare Code Brown Plans. The guidelines aims to clarify the purpose of Code Brown plans and highlights some key steps to take before, during and after an external emergency. |
| Victorian Guidelines for Planning Safe Public | Provides information to assist event organisers in planning safe events. |
Protocols
| Documents | Description |
|---|---|
| Emergency Incident Casualty Data Collection Protocol | Describes the procedures for the provision of emergency incident information between health services and Department of Health. The protocol applies to all Victorian public and private health services with an Emergency Department or Urgent Care Centre. Its objective is to collate reliable, accurate, timely and consistent information on presentations to health services resulting from an emergency incident. |
| Victorian Medical Assistance Team Protocol | Describes the selection, training, equipping, deployment and administrative arrangements for VMAT. It lists the various major, metropolitan and regional trauma centres at which VMATs have been established, the composition of each VMAT team, training and exercising requirements, and the process by which VMAT assistance may be activated. |
Reviewed 21 January 2026