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In the News Memorial gets $5.7 million for trauma
In the News Memorial gets $5.7 million for trauma | Memorial gets $5.7 million for trauma |
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Savannah Morning News | June 9, 2008 ATLANTA - Memorial University Medical Center will receive almost $5.7 million as part of a plan to help keep the state's trauma-care hospitals afloat until the legislature can come up with a permanent source of funding for the financially beleaguered network. The money was among $58.9 million doled out Monday by the Georgia Trauma Care Network Commission, the first time the state has put forward significant funding in an effort to help hospitals designed to treat the most severely injured patients. "This one-time infusion at least stabilized or saved what fragile system we had," said Dr. Dennis Ashley, who chairs the commission. Mike Polak, executive director of marketing and external affairs at Memorial, applauded the commission's plan for splitting up the funding. "Considering all the holes they were trying to fill, I thought they balanced out the dollars across the network pretty well," Polak said. "I really think they did a good job stabilizing the network for one more year." Still, the allocation for Memorial was less than the average per-patient funding received by the trauma hospitals. Memorial got about $3,625 a patient; the state average was $4,229. In all, hospitals received $40.1 million of the money set aside for trauma care, and another $12 million will go to doctors who work in trauma care. "That's a huge assistance to us on the medical staff side, because there had never been anything to assist our physician practices and allow them to be as supportive as we need them to be," said Rich Bias, senior vice president for ambulatory and network services for MCG Health System, a hospital run in connection with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Another $6.5 million went to the emergency medical services providers, like ambulances, and the rest went to the commission to cover administrative costs. And advocates and hospital executives say the trauma-care situation in Georgia will not be completely fixed until the General Assembly steps forward with a regular stream of money for the state's 14 trauma-care centers. "The idea that 700 people die every year in Georgia because we don't have a strong, viable trauma network is not acceptable under any circumstances," Fort said. For the second year in a row, lawmakers ended their annual legislative session this year without a permanent funding source for trauma. "They cannot let that fail again," said Dr. Arthur Kellerman, associate dean for health policy at Emory University. "If they do, I think you'll see hospitals exit the system, and we won't have a system." Source URL: http://savannahnow.com//node/513182 |