Trauma care crashes again
From GONSO’s Jason Kiely:
The other day my fourth-grader glanced up from one of her trivia books to announce that a leech – a blood-sucking leech – has 32 brains. In a moment that revealed how low my personal standards have sunk, I replied, “Hmmm … Now I don’t feel so bad.”
She got it immediately, as witnessed by her eye-rolling and reluctance to return my high-five. But I thought I made a valid point: Compare what a leech has accomplished with 32 brains versus what I have done with just one. I feel better about myself already.
It’s a shame that Georgia’s elected legislative body, which has 236 brains, can’t feel better about some of its accomplishments.
Take our still non-existent statewide trauma care network. Year after year, our elected officials, who talk a good game about supporting health care and emergency medicine and saving lives, simply have not put all those brains together to figure out a way to permanently fund a trauma system.
This year was no different. In fact, it turned out worse than last year, when the legislators ponied up almost $59 million to keep a handful of trauma centers open. In the closing week of the 2009 session, they squeaked through the Super Speeder law, which will provide about $23 million for the Georgia Trauma Trust Fund in 2010. Unfortunately, running an organized network of trauma specialists and facilities needs about 100 million bucks a year.
Bottom line: We’re going backward, in more ways than one.
At this rate, Georgia will not have a statewide trauma system. Ever. Put another way, let’s just say that if you live or travel south of Macon or west of Savannah, where trauma centers are few and far between, make sure your affairs are in order. More than 5,000 Georgians die of traumatic injury every year. Advocates of a trauma system claim it would save about 700 lives a year, even with moderate success.
In the meantime, people are dying in the streets. And worse, they are dying in emergency rooms, where Georgians often erroneously believe that all trauma care is equal and you will get the maximum care possible. Not so. A fully equipped and staffed state-designated trauma center – of which Georgia has 15 and needs about 30 – is far more likely to save your life than a general ER, which number 137 at acute care hospitals throughout the state. Fewer than a third of trauma victims are treated at a trauma center in Georgia.
Read the rest of this story at GONSO.
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