Countywide : Experts to Reexamine Fountain Valley Center

A team of four doctors and a nurse will reexamine Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center’s trauma center--which was the subject of a critical audit report earlier this year--to recommend whether the hospital should be redesignated as a trauma center, county supervisors voted Tuesday.

In July, a team of outside medical experts that reviewed the county’s four trauma centers recommended that Fountain Valley’s designation--which permits it to receive and treat accident and crime victims with life-threatening injuries--should be extended for only 120 days.

The trauma centers at Western Medical Center and Mission Community Hospital were extended for two years, while UCI Medical Center’s was extended for one year.

Under the county’s trauma system, paramedics handling major trauma patients--victims of car accidents, shootings, knifings, falls and other accidents--bypass the nearest community hospital and instead deliver them to designated hospitals that are geared up with surgeons, operating rooms and special staff to handle such life-threating injuries.

In the audit report, Fountain Valley, the busiest hospital in the county’s trauma system, was criticized for ordering too many medical tests in some cases and not enough in others. The hospital at times took on too many cases and should have diverted patients to other trauma centers, reviewers said.

Hospital officials replied that the review had been based on patients’ charts from January, 1983, to July, 1984, and did not reflect changes in the trauma center’s operations since then. Further, they pointed out that the review team’s most critical member--who had surveyed Fountain Valley and UCI Medical Center--was not involved in the critique of Western Medical Center and Mission Community Hospital, which received better reports.

The new survey team, approved by supervisors without comment Tuesday, will be composed of Stephen Michel, a surgeon from Cedars Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles; Martin Weiss, a neurosurgeon from Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center; H. David Root, a surgeon from the University of Health Science Center in San Antonio, Tex., and Robert Salsameda, a trauma nurse coordinator from Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina.

The team will recommend whether Fountain Valley should be re-designated, and if so, for how long. The longest possible re-designation period is two years.

Assisting the review team will be Dr. Robert Bade, Orange County Emergency Medical Services medical director; Betty O’Rourke, county EMS program director; and Pam McFadden, county EMS secretary.

In addition, Dr. Kym Salness, director of emergency medicine at UCI Medical Center, will act as consultant to the committee. Tom Uram, director of the county Health Care Agency, said this will be Salness’ first duty in a new part-time position, expected to be approved next month, to monitor quality control for the county’s emergency medical services.

Supervisors agreed to spend up to $4,756 for survey expenses and consultation services.