Surgeons oppose trauma center bill

Leaders of three trauma centers in Florida, including Orlando Regional Medical Center, are speaking today in Tallahassee against proposed House and Senate bills that would deregulate the state’s trauma system.

“The concern I have is that not only the public won’t get the appropriate level of care, but also, it’s very expensive to run a trauma center, and multiple hospitals trying to maintain this high level of care and resources is only going to increase health care costs,” said Dr. Michael Cheatham, trauma surgeon and chief surgical quality officer for ORMC.

For nearly three decades now, Florida has been using a needbased system to decide whether establishing a new Level I or II trauma center is warranted. The state is divided into 19 service areas; there is a limit, or cap, on the total number of trauma centers. That cap is 44, and the state currently has 34 trauma centers.

But through a House bill and an identical bill going through the Senate, lawmakers want to dismantle the current system because they say it’s outdated, not reflective of the state’s population growth and costly because of litigation.

“We’re getting sued because of the 19 service areas because someone doesn’t want somebody else to come there,” said Paul Runk, director of legislative affairs at the Florida Department of Health, who testified in favor of the House Bill at a March 27 House Health Innovation Subcommittee meeting.

He said the department has spent nearly $1 million in the past 18 months to fight such litigation.

In Florida House Bill 1077, cosponsored by Rep. Jay Trumbull, R-Panama City, and Rep. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, lawmakers propose that instead of getting state’s permission to establish a trauma center, a health system is required to obtain the voluntary Trauma Center verification from the American College of Surgeons, which sets the standards for trauma care. The Department of Health would continue to give the trauma center designation.

But critics of the bill say that allowing health systems to establish trauma centers with no restrictions can dilute the experience of trauma surgeons and put patient safety at risk.

“If my child were injured, I’d want her taken to the busiest trauma center, not the closest,” said Lindy Kennedy, executive vice president of the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, which is holding today’s news conference in Tallahassee that includes ORMC, Lee Memorial Hospital and Broward Health Medical Center. “Adding trauma centers may sound appealing, but this is one case where more is not better,” she said in a news release.

But Steven Menton, a lobbyist for HCA, told the Florida House Health Innovation Subcommittee that in states without needbased systems “new centers have increased access and other states have shown that the approach works.”

HCA established two new Level 2 trauma centers in Central Florida last year.