Countywide : Trauma System Is Working, Aide Says

Two weeks after one of Orange County’s four trauma centers closed for good, the medical emergency system is running smoothly and accident victims are receiving prompt medical care, a county health official said Friday.

Some trauma experts had warned of long transport times--and rising deaths--when Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, one of the county’s busiest trauma centers, stopped taking critically injured accident and gunshot victims Dec. 27.

But the three remaining centers are coping well, according to Betty O’Rouke, Emergency Medical Services program manager, and only a few patients have had to be taken out of the county to a trauma center in Long Beach.

“‘Things are looking good,” O’Rourke said. “We (county officials) anticipated we wouldn’t have any problems. But it’s sure nice to have numbers that show that.”

From Dec. 28 to Jan. 11. Orange County’s trauma system handled 124 patients or an average of 8.3 patients a day. The patient average last year was 7.2, O’Rourke said.

Of those, she said, 51 patients were taken to UCI Medical Center, 40 to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, 29 to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo and four to Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

In the same two-week period, local trauma centers were full and patients had to be sent to a more distant center 22 times compared with 36 temporary closures in that period last year, she said.

O’Rourke also said that most patients were taken from the accident scene to a trauma center in less than 20 minutes, with transport times averaging about 10 minutes.

O’Rourke also noted that county officials are continuing discussions with two north county hospitals--Los Alamitos Medical Center and Humana Hospital-Huntington Beach--about the possibility of joining the trauma system. O’Rourke and other county officials are trying to recruit a new center to serve northwest Orange County to close the gap left by the Fountain Valley center’s closure.