“Wall time is not really a standardized measure, so it’s hard for me to comment on that. The health department used standardized time stamps from ambulances - when they arrive at the hospital and when they go back in service - as the best estimate of the time it takes to offload a patient and move on to the next emergency call. States, medics and hospitals across the nation have been grappling with wall time, which sees a median of 48 minutes for transfers across the state, but have not figured out a consistent measure to count the amount of time medics are stuck on the wall. Ware, Baptist’s CEO, notes that wall time is not a standard metric. By comparison, UMMC’s wall time is comparable, at around an hour, but their 47-bed emergency department sees more than double the number of patient transfers as Baptist and St. But the two also had the highest average wall times. ![]() Dominic saw the fewest patient transfers last year - around 1,300 each - among high-volume hospitals. But it’s still ambulance crews who pay the price.Īccording to health department data, Baptist and St. Paramedic complaints about wall time recently escalated to the point that the health department’s trauma council asked the Attorney General’s office to intervene.Īccording to a memo, Mississippi code is so clear that patient liability falls to hospitals, the AG did not opine and instead pointed to statute reiter ating wall time burden falls on hospitals, not paramedics. This is known as wall time in the emergency medical services field. The decision by the Jackson hospitals to opt out of accepting the most critical trauma patients came into focus recently when emergency medical services personnel complained that the practice leads to prolonged periods before patients are admitted to emergency departments. There are 17 hospitals operating as a Level 3 and 61 hospitals that are Level 4. Three hospitals are operating as a Level 2. Of the 85 hospitals participating in the state trauma care system, there is one in-state hospital and three out-of-state hospitals operating as a Level 1. Dominic and Baptist can send trauma patients to other hospitals, but do not have to receive them. Dominic might still get some trauma patients who walk through the door or that they accept from another hospital, but the trauma system that coordinates most emergency care across the state through on-scene ambulance crews usually sends high-need patients to facilities operated Level 2 or Level 1.īut because trauma patients can only be transferred to hospitals with higher trauma care designations, St. It does not preclude us from taking trauma patients, we average over 100 trauma patients a year that we provide care for,” she said.ĭespite operating as a Level 4, it’s possible that both Baptist and St. And so that’s why we choose a specific level in the trauma system. “We participate at a level that we feel we have the availability of specialists to support that trauma level. ![]() They are currently undergoing a 25,000-square-foot renovation to add 20 rooms to their emergency department.īobby Ware, chief executive officer and administrator of Jackson’s Baptist Medical Center, said the hospital disagrees with their designated Level 2 status. Dominic, which houses 33 emergency slots in a 571-bed capacity hospital, added that improving efficiency and reducing congestion is a priority and part of the impetus for recent upgrades. UMMC is the only Level 1 hospital in the state, supported by three Level 2 hospitals triangulated around Jackson to bolster regional care in Gulfport, Hattiesburg and Tupelo.Ī volunteer and a first responder jog toward other ambulances gathering outside the Winston Medical Center in Louisville, Miss., Apafter a tornado hit the small hospital, a nursing home next door and numerous houses. The system aims to get patients to the appropriate hospital for their injuries the first time, rather than using overburdened emergency medical resources to get them there later as a transfer. Mississippi was the first state to mandate participation in a statewide trauma care system - a network of regional hospitals each designated to give a specific level of care, from basic stabilization all the way up to complex surgery - to triage high-need emergency patients across the state. Since the trauma system’s inception, overall trauma injuries have increased - mostly vehicle crashes - but trauma deaths have decreased overall, which the state health department credits to the trauma system’s functionality. Unintentional injury is the largest cause of death for Mississippians aged 1 to 44. That sum is split between trauma hospitals with a small portion going to ambulance services across the state to subsidize high-cost, uncompensated trauma care at hospitals that participate in the program. These payments plus traffic fines from certain recreational vehicles and vanity tag fees fund about a $20 million yearly payout.
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