State Petitioned for Trauma Funds

The county’s Emergency Medical Services Commission and county supervisors called on the state Legislature on Monday to convene a special session to approve more funds for Los Angeles County’s ailing trauma network.

The request came at a hearing on the dwindling resources available to the county’s 13 trauma centers, which have lost 50% of their state funding this year alone.

“This issue can be resolved within three days, and that is a good investment for this state,” said Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a former assemblyman.

But even as the county made that demand--and won a cool reception even from legislators who said they were sympathetic--supervisors said they would take it upon themselves to find the money to keep the system intact for two years.

“I don’t think we can get into a spat with the state with the consequence of that spat being the closure of trauma centers,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who nevertheless has threatened a ballot initiative in 2002 if the state does not increase its trauma funding.

Criticism of the state was rampant at the 4-hour hearing, which drew more than 300 people, including doctors, nurses and patients, to the county Hall of Administration. Speaker after speaker expressed shock that the Legislature was unaware of the fragile state of the county trauma system.

“This is nothing new,” said Dr. Vijay S. Kaushik, a commissioner and cardiologist at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. “The fact that we need to educate our legislators is a shame.”

Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who chairs a committee on health care in Los Angeles County, said she was “stunned at the state’s neglect of this critical component of health care.”

Still, Romero said she doubted the Legislature would call a special session. And Assemblyman Martin Gallegos (D-Baldwin Park) said he was skeptical there would be political support to add money to pay hospitals for trauma care.

The trauma system was created in the early 1980s to provide destinations for paramedics carrying severely injured patients. Private hospitals fought to join the network until they realized how costly it was. By 1989, 10 hospitals had dropped out.

At that point, the state stepped in and dedicated tobacco tax money to reimburse private hospitals for some trauma operations. But since then, that money has dropped more than 80%, leading hospitals to threaten closure of their trauma wards if more money is not found.

Speakers said Monday that would be a catastrophe but said local officials would never let it happen. Still, the threat was useful to them to draw attention to the need for a stable source of state funding.

Commissioner Mark Costa said that Sacramento seemed to give money only if it believed a crisis looms. “The Catch-22 is, must a crisis be created?” he asked rhetorically.

Any deterioration in the trauma system, speakers said, would be intolerable, causing more deaths and suffering at a time when government coffers are full.

“I find it personally repugnant that we would not consider funding these trauma centers,” said Kenneth Reed, a 54-year-old Northridge man whose life was saved in Northridge Hospital Medical Center’s trauma unit after a car wreck.

Added Debbie Guzman, whose daughter Nadia was treated at the same hospital for major liver and pancreas damage after a go-cart accident, “If she had died, I don’t know if I would have been able to survive. These trauma centers are just unbelievably important.”

Entertainer Dick Clark, who was also treated at Northridge after a traffic collision said, “I guarantee that if you’re hit by a car, . . . that when you’re lying on your back in an ambulance, you’re going to be praying there’s a trauma center nearby.”

Monday featured rumblings on another health care front, as a coalition of three unions representing more than 20,000 county health workers warned of a possible strike on Oct. 1. The group includes nurses, doctors and residents, all of whose unions have contract disagreements with the county.

“We will not allow the county to punish the doctors for unionizing or ignore the just contract demands of other county health care workers,” said Dr. Orland Pile in a statement.

A spokesman for the county health department said medical officials have contingency plans if job actions disrupt health services.