By Eric Poole
The Herald
SHARON, Pa. — After the school shooting last week at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., emergency room doctors at Broward Health North hospital treated several victims, including some of the fatalities, when they received a troubling alert.
The suspected shooter was being brought in for treatment. According to multiple media reports after the Feb. 14 shooting, the hospital personnel treated the suspect, who was not seriously injured, like they would have any other patient.
That’s part of the emergency room doctor’s job, said Dr. Arvind Venkat, vice president of the Pennsylvania College of Emergency Physicians. Venkat, who works in the emergency room at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, said he has never had to treat a mass shooting.
But he has treated criminals. In each instance, Venkat said he, just like the doctors last week at Broward Health North, addressed his patient’s injuries in a professional manner.
“It’s just part of the job,” Venkat said Thursday at Sharon Regional Medical Center. “We take care of every patient who comes through the door.”
Venkat represented the state emergency physicians’ organization Thursday when U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of Butler, R-3rd District, stopped at Sharon Regional to discuss ways to help local hospitals.
“What is your main concern, why is it your main concern, and how can we fix it,” Kelly said.
During Kelly’s visit, which lasted about an hour, he talked with hospital personnel — including Sharon Regional President Joseph Hugar, Emergency Department Medical Director Dr. David Shellenbarger and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Morgenstern — on topics including the recruitment of talent and dealing with the opioid epidemic.
Shellenbarger and Morgenstern told Kelly that Sharon Regional sometimes had difficulty in attracting physicians because federal regulations limits the funds available for graduate medical education. Without a significant supply of young doctors through the medical education program, Sharon Regional has to sell not only its own facility, but the entire Shenango Valley.
Morgenstern related a story of an interview he had with a physician, who attended high school in Mohawk School District, nearby in Lawrence County, and was looking to return home for work.
“I told him, ‘Now’s the time in the interview where I spend the next half-hour convincing you to move here. I guess I don’t have to do that,’” Morgenstern said.
He said young doctors could see that the Shenango Valley offers a high quality of life if Sharon Regional were able to train more physicians. Venkat urged passage of federal legislation to decrease regulations on training funding, which he said could address a shortage of emergency room doctors, which he called “a key part of the medical safety net.”
When the discussion turned to the opioid epidemic, Kelly said the issue affected him personally when a 41-year-old man that the congressman had coached in midget football died of an overdose in North Carolina.
“We’re losing folks every day, day after day,’” Kelly said. “It’s affecting everybody, and it doesn’t matter what your socioeconomic level.”
Venkat said emergency departments are seeing the opioid epidemic’s effects every day, with doctors sometimes seeing the same people coming into hospitals two and three times a shift.
He suggested treating addiction like any other illness, with the promotion of comprehensive treatment programs, including counseling and the use of suboxone, a medication to help addicts stop using opioids.
Kelly acknowledged that comprehensive treatment plans might be expensive, but they could also prevent repeat emergency room visits, which could wind up costing taxpayers, hospitals and insurance companies more in the long run.
“What is the cost of not doing it?” Kelly asked. “At this point in the epidemic, we need to find ways to reduce the harm and save lives.”
The fourth-term congressman said outreach efforts like the one Thursday at Sharon Regional, and his stop at Grove City Medical Center afterward serve a purpose that serves him well when he returns to Washington, D.C.
“The people who are out there every day, that’s who I want to talk to,” Kelly said. “As the federal government, we don’t want to be invasive, but we want to be there to help.”
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