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Reading Hospital Trauma Unit to Get Accreditation

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 August 2005, 15:01 CDT

Aug. 3--The Reading Hospital and Medical Center this fall will receive accreditation for a trauma service it began this year and a medical helicopter.

Accreditation is expected Oct. 1 and clears the way for Reading Hospital to charge more for expensive lifesaving treatments, and to recover business lost in recent years to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township.

"The biggest benefit is to the residents of Reading and Berks County," said Scott Wolfe, Reading Hospital's senior vice president and chief operating officer. Families no longer will have to travel to the Lehigh Valley or Hershey to visit a sick or injured loved one, he said.

Trauma centers keep teams of trained professionals on the premises 24 hours a day to deliver blood, supplemental oxygen and other lifesaving treatments to the most seriously ill and injured patients. They cost several million dollars and require months of training to get off the ground.

Reading Hospital officials applied for the status in January and on Oct. 1 expect to become the 27th trauma center accredited by the Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation.

The step comes about 3 1/2 years after LVH put a helicopter and base station at Reading Regional Airport in Bern Township to fly critically ill and injured patients from Berks County to its trauma center in Salisbury Township.

When that occurred in March 2002, Reading Hospital President and Chief Executive Officer Charles Sullivan called the move an intrusion that will "drive up our costs, the costs to our community and the costs to individual patients who are transported for no reason at their dire time of need."

Reacting Tuesday to Reading Hospital's announcement, LVH spokesman Brian Downs acknowledged that University MedEvac is likely to lose some of the transports (430 from the Berks area to Salisbury last year), but not all. Besides critically ill and injured adults, LVH is accredited to treat trauma in children and burn patients, he said. Reading is not.

Officials at St. Luke's Hospital in Fountain Hill, which operates the only other accredited trauma center in the Lehigh Valley, applauded Reading's accreditation. Both St. Luke's and Reading Hospital belong to the University of Pennsylvania Trauma Network.

A University PennSTAR helicopter will begin serving Berks County immediately after accreditation at a base station location yet to be determined, Wolfe said. That base will be on the hospital campus, he added, but in an area closer to major highways where most traumatic injuries occur.

"This is an exciting time for us," Wolfe said. "We can't wait for it to start."

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Source: The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania

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