Trauma Center Troubles

Dear Editor:

I saw a Facebook post regarding the possible site for a trauma center. While that is good news, people should not get their hopes up too much. The location is by far the easiest issue. Funding is the most problematic issue. A trauma center cannot stand alone, like an urgent care. A trauma center requires hospital beds, an ICU, operating rooms, and a housing unit for the staff, just to name a few requirements. A housing unit is required because the highly specialized staff, which includes at a minimum, nurses, a general surgeon, a trauma surgeon, a neurosurgeon, an orthopedic surgeon, a radiologist, and anesthesiologists, all of whom must be on site, 24/7. They cannot be “on call” elsewhere. Can you imagine the costs of paying salaries for all these specialists?

Currently, the cost of building a new hospital is about $4 million per bed, and that’s just for a standard hospital room. Let’s say a minimum-sized facility was planned, maybe just 50 beds. Add an ER, OR, ICU, telemetry unit, laboratory, dorm facility, cafeteria, and a radiology department which would need not just X rays, but ultrasound, doppler, and a CT scanner. Construction costs would probably be well over $500 million. Operating costs would be similar to that figure every year. The city might build the facility (though I doubt that) but who would run it? HHC? I doubt that too.

Finally, I don’t believe the peninsula has enough trauma cases to justify the existence of such a new facility, which is unfortunate, but that’s the reality. If only the community had supported Peninsula when it needed help, I don’t believe this discussion would be happening now.

Peter Galvin, MD

Chief Medical Officer, Peninsula Hospital Center, 2002 – 2012