SUBMITTED NEWS RELEASE
The trauma center at Renown Regional Medical Center has been verified as a Level II Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons (ACS).
This achievement recognizes the trauma center’s dedication to providing optimal care for injured patients. Renown has held the verification since 1989. On average, more than 3,000 trauma patients from the region are treated at Renown Regional each year.
“ACS Trauma Center Verification is awarded only to centers which provide consistent excellence in care for severely injured patients,” said Myron Gomez, MD, FACS, Chief of Trauma at Renown Regional. “Trauma care is a multidisciplinary effort including emergency medicine, radiology, anesthesia, trauma-surgical critical care, orthopaedic, plastic-facial surgery and neurosurgery. Trauma system care begins with prehospital critical care transport and is a system wide effort of surgery, critical care and rehabilitation services.”
This verification is not only significant for the cities in the region, but it’s also important to rural partners who rely on Renown Health to support them when patients from outlying areas are injured.
“I very much appreciate having Renown as our regional trauma center,” said Liz Muckerman, M.D., with Barton Memorial in South Lake Tahoe and Carson Valley Medical Center in Gardnerville. “Although it is interesting to treat trauma patients, we can’t do it well without extensive support such as 24 hour interventional radiology and multiple surgical subspecialties.”
Established by the American College of Surgeons in 1987, the Consultation/Verification Program for Hospitals promotes the development trauma systems. This encompasses the prehospital phase through the rehabilitation process.
Verified trauma centers must meet essential criteria that ensure trauma care capability and institutional performance, as outlined by the American College of Surgeons’ Committee on Trauma in its current “Resources for the Optimal Care of the Injured Patient” manual.
The ACS Committee on Trauma’s verification program does not designate trauma centers. Rather, the program provides confirmation that a trauma center has demonstrated its commitment to providing the highest quality trauma care for all injured patients. The actual establishment and the designation of trauma centers is the function of local, regional, or state health care systems agencies.
There are five separate categories of verification in the Committee on Trauma’s program (Level I Trauma Center, Level II Trauma Center, Level III Trauma Center, Level I Pediatric Trauma Center and Level II Pediatric Trauma Center). Each category has specific criteria that must be met by a facility seeking that level of verification. Each hospital has an on-site review by a team of experienced site reviewers, who use the current “Resources for the Optimal Care of the Injured Patient” manual as a guideline in conducting the survey.
Level 1 and Level II centers have essentially the same clinical staff and resource requirements. Level 1 centers are required to teach surgical residents.
The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational association of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical education and practice and to improve the care of the surgical patient. The College has over 72,000 members and it is the largest association of surgeons in the world. Longstanding achievements have placed the ACS in the forefront of American surgery and have made it an important advocate for all surgical patients.
For more information, visit renown.org/ER.
