![]() ![]() HCA’s expansion into trauma centers alarms health policy analysts who suggest its motive is more about chasing profit than improving patient care. “Once a hospital has a trauma designation, it can charge thousands of dollars in activation fees for the same care seen in the same emergency room,” said Stacie Sasso, executive director of the Health Services Coalition, made up of unions and employers fighting trauma center expansion by HCA and others in Nevada. The bills for all this - reaching into tens of thousands of dollars - go to private insurers, Medicare or Medicaid, or patients themselves. Trauma centers are mostly exempt from 1970s-era certificate-of-need laws enacted to limit excessive hospital spending and expansion. The status allows a cascade of lucrative reimbursement, including activation fees billed on top of regular charges for medical care. State or local regulators confer the designation “trauma center,” often in concert with standards verified by the American College of Surgeons. Alan Brookhurst, SMH’s trauma center medical director.Trauma patients are typically those severely injured in automobile accidents or falls or wounded by knives or guns. The overall trauma mortality rate in the first year was 2.9 percent, well below the 4.31 percent benchmark reported nationally for all trauma centers in 2015, according to Dr. Sarasota Memorial’s trauma center has treated more than 2,000 patients in its 14 months of operation. To earn the Level II designation, Sarasota Memorial developed a specialized team including eight trauma surgeons and two orthopedic traumatologists, as well as other emergency physicians, subspecialists, trauma and intensive care nurses and rehabilitation specialists. The only Level I trauma center in the region remains Tampa General in Tampa. The next closest Level II trauma center, according to the Florida Department of Health, is Blake Medical Center in Bradenton. Hospital officials say the new designation will ensure critically injured patients in Sarasota County can be transported to and treated as Sarasota Memorial rather than being transported to other trauma centers. At the end of this year, the 44-bed Rehabilitation Pavilion is scheduled to open. The next step at the trauma center will be a trauma progressive care until to help transition patients from critical care to rehabilitation. Hospital officials say the trauma program requires a $16-million investment over three years, including specially equipped trauma bays, operating rooms, a trauma intensive care unit, a trauma step-down unit, and several specialty nursing units. And it certainly wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our medical staff and the community we serve.” “This milestone achievement validates everyone’s commitment-from the Hospital Board to physicians, nurses and staff-to providing the most advanced, lifesaving care. “Earning trauma designation was a tremendous effort that required extraordinary passion, expertise and a highly specialized team to respond around-the-clock to any critical situation,” said CEO David Verinder. Hospital officials began the process of earning the designation in early 2015, and got provisional approval to open the center in May last year. Sarasota Memorial Hospital received a full designation as a Level II trauma center from the Florida Department of Health, making it the first and only trauma program in Sarasota. ![]()
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