By Mary Ann Roser
The Austin American-Statesman
ST. DAVID, Texas — St. David’s Round Rock Medical Center and Seton Medical Center Williamson are vying to house the region’s next trauma center and the first in Williamson County.
The hospitals, owned by competing systems, both said Friday that they will seek Level 2 trauma designation from the state. St. David’s HealthCare, operator of Round Rock Medical Center, beat the Seton Family of Hospitals in making the announcement, prompting Seton to reveal its plans ahead of schedule.
“We were going to announce this next week,” said Greg Hartman, senior vice president for Seton, adding that he would scrap the news conference but proceed with the lengthy review process to enable Seton Williamson to treat the most critical patients.
University Medical Center Brackenridge and Dell Children’s Medical Center are the only Level 2 trauma centers in the Austin area, but both have passed a key hurdle on their way to Level 1, hospital officials said this week.
Level 1 and 2 centers provide similar levels of patient care, but Level 1 centers are the most comprehensive and are distinguished by the amount of research they do.
“From an EMS standpoint, we don’t care who opens one; we just want one. We need a trauma center,” said Joe Granberry, deputy director of Williamson County Emergency Medical Services. “Trauma care is time-sensitive, and in some cases, literally minutes can mean life or death.”
In the past 16 months, Williamson County EMS has taken about 600 trauma patients to Austin, said Deborah Ryle, CEO of St. David’s Round Rock.
She said her 173-bed hospital would start accepting trauma patients in October or November, then be reviewed by the American College of Surgeons sometime next year.
The reviewers examine the hospital’s track record and processes with trauma patients, and if they approve, the College of Surgeons verifies the hospital as a trauma center.
Once that happens, the state almost always awards the designation.
“You really do increase the complexity of the services you provide,” said Dr. David Martin, chief medical officer at St. David’s Round Rock. “This is going to take us up another notch.”
Texas does not limit the number of trauma centers allowed in an area, said Kimberly Walters, trauma designation coordinator for the Department of State Health Services.
Although Williamson County is growing rapidly and a trauma center would draw patients from other parts of the region, Granberry questioned whether two would be needed.
Ryle also questioned the need for two centers. “At this time, this community is best served with one Level 2 trauma center,” she said.
Trauma centers are expensive to operate, and in recent years, some have closed nationwide because they lost too much money.
Some hospitals have paid high fees to doctors because fewer specialists have been willing to take emergency calls after hours.
Seton Williamson, which has 119 beds in operation, expects to spend several million dollars of the proposed trauma center’s cost to keep surgeons on call, Hartman said.
Ryle declined to say how much she expects the trauma center to cost but said she expects it to make money.
Scott & White Healthcare ... Round Rock Hospital is not currently interested in seeking a Level 2 trauma center, a spokesman said.
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