Siena trauma center vital to health care landscape

By Brian Brannman

Wednesday, July 27, 2016 | 2 a.m.

No one wants to be in car crash, yet hundreds of auto accidents involving injuries happen in Henderson every year. The physical force transmitted to the human body in an auto crash, technically defined as blunt-force trauma, is severe. Often injuries are not visible to the naked eye, even to medical professionals.

The national trauma system exists to rapidly and accurately diagnose and treat blunt-force and other life-altering injuries. It ensures optimal, often life-saving treatment. Trauma treatment is specialized to treat these types of injuries. While sharing some similarities with general emergency room treatment, there are specialized needs for trauma patients, such as a higher level of availability of surgeons and operating rooms.

In 2005, Dignity Health’s St. Rose Dominican Hositals — Siena Campus became a level III trauma center. Henderson was one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation at the time, and with its ever-evolving transportation infrastructure, travel times from Henderson to University Medical Center were too long. A level III trauma center was an absolute necessity.

The Siena campus’ level III trauma designation helped bring less-complex cases to Siena, where patients could be treated according to trauma guidelines as efficiently as possible. This helps ensure the community’s two high-level trauma centers, UMC and Sunrise Hospital, can do their best to ensure rapid treatment for more-severely injured trauma patients. Henderson is the second-largest city in the state, and having a level III trauma center keeps patients and families in their own community, when appropriate, at half of what it would cost to be at a level I or II trauma center.

Late last month, the Southern Nevada Health District’s Board of Health voted 7-2 against expanding the trauma system in Southern Nevada. During that battle, many misconceptions about what a level III trauma center can do — or cannot do — were communicated. Some even questioned whether the valley should have any level III trauma centers.

The Siena campus has a level of resources, expertise and readiness that a typical emergency room does not have. A level III center has trauma-trained surgeons and staff and operating rooms set aside for trauma patients. Our trauma center can offload patients immediately who otherwise could have a wait of up to 30 minutes — which can be the difference between life and death. The assessment of a trauma patient is more thorough and intense, and patient outcomes are improved because of the staff’s level of expertise.

None of this includes the additional outreach, prevention and education programs that trauma centers must provide the community or the protocol of a transfer agreement with the higher-level trauma centers within the system. Due to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, no hospital can turn patients away from its emergency department if the patients need to be stabilized and treated. Sometimes, a patient’s injury is worse than expected, and he or she needs be transferred to a higher-level trauma center. A level III trauma center has the ability to do that quickly, and Siena sometimes has to make that decision.

The organization for validating trauma centers in Nevada is the American College of Surgeons’ Committee on Trauma. To become a verified ACS trauma center, the hospital must meet very strict criteria, and the COT reviews every trauma center in the state every three years.

We believe the current system is working and should stay that way while the Southern Nevada Health District’s Board of Health determines whether more trauma system capacity is needed. When the need is there, Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican will support it.

Brian Brannman is the senior vice president of operations for Dignity Health Nevada.