Hospital president: What trauma certification means to community

Level IV TraumaCenter Accreditationstatus has been granted to St. Luke's Miners Campus, effective November 1, 2013, bringing the total number of trauma centers inPennsylvania to thirty-two.

St. Luke's Miners Campus is the first Pennsylvania hospital to receive the Level IV designation, enhancing care of injured patients in the commonwealth's rural regions.

Trauma and Emergency Department physicians will now be able to treat select trauma patients at the St. Luke's Miners Campus. For more serious traumas, the St. Luke's Miners trauma team will stabilize and prepare patients for safe transfer via ground or air transport to St. Luke'sUniversity Hospital Bethlehem, a Level I Trauma Center. St. Luke's University Hospital - Bethlehem has been an accredited Trauma Center for the past 15 years.

The Level IV Trauma accreditation at St. Luke's Miners Campus represents our continued dedication to providing great quality care to our community. Typically a three-year process, the physicians and staff at St. Luke's Miners were able to accomplish this accreditation in less than two.

The accreditation process included additional trauma-based education for physicians and nurses, a review of care delivery to trauma patients, as well as the revision of hospital policies, procedures and guidelines.

Trauma centers, as defined by the Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation (PTSF), are hospitals with trauma care resources immediately available to provide efficient surgical and medical intervention to reduce the likelihood of death or disability to injured patients. Having a trauma center in the region will allow patients to be seen by a trauma team more quickly, resulting in improved patient outcomes.

Each trauma center, regardless of its level, is an integral component of the emergency medical services (EMS) system. The EMS system assures appropriate trauma patient care management from the time of injury to treatment at a local hospital or trauma center through therehabilitative phase of care. Having a local trauma center will decrease travel time for EMS teams and will provide paramedics quicker turn-around time, allowing them to service the local community more efficiently and effectively.

The Level IV traumacertification will resultin more patients staying closer to home. We understand the added hardship on families when patients need transport out of the area and are pleased to be able to alleviate that burden for those suffering minor traumas.

Level IV TraumaCertification is yet another example of St. Luke'songoing commitment to the Miners community.

Over the last three years the campus has addedtwenty-two new specialty physicians, including those practicing cardiology,oncology, neurology,obstetrics and gynecology, orthopaedics and urology - and we will continue tofulfill our mission ofproviding improved access to quality care close to home.