ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Trauma Care Is on Critical List

In two weeks, the Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center will close its trauma center, which lost $1 million last year and had been projected to lose $3 million in 1990. Almost nothing can be done to save the facility at this late date.

Unless the Board of Supervisors and concerned officials and community groups move quickly, the Orange County system that began eight years ago to save lives--particularly in the “golden hour” after a severe injury--may be in danger. Once there were five trauma centers in the county, but soon there will be only three, all of them under added financial pressure as the system dwindles.

The loss of the Fountain Valley facility points up once again--as if another reminder were needed--the crisis in health care affecting not only Orange County but the rest of California and the nation as well. It is caused in part by the inability of hospitals and physicians to absorb the cost of treating the indigent and uninsured without sufficient reimbursement by the government.

On a broader scale, the entire system of health-care delivery in this nation must be rethought. But in the meantime, the Board of Supervisors needs to find ways to increase revenues to Orange County’s trauma-care system that do not steal from one health program to finance another.

The board must aggressively explore ways to increase state funding for health care. At present, Orange County is shorted about $45 million a year by state health officials, because of formulas that favor urban counties. While attempts have been made to right this wrong, it is time for a no-holds-barred effort by the board.

This was one of several recommendations adopted recently by the United Way Health Care Task Force consisting of 45 Orange County provider, business, civic, labor and other organizations. Unless the board moves quickly, there may be little left of the trauma system to save.