Despite tight budget and opposition from rural hospitals, Ky. approves statewide trauma system

Many rural areas lack systems that designate hospitals as trauma centers, and as a result many rural patients have died because they are not taken to the correct facility quickly enough. In Kentucky, lawmakers recently passed a bill to establish a statewide trauma system, reports The Courier-Journal of Louisville. The bill encourages the creation of written transport protocols for emergency medical services to define which patients can stay at a local hospital and which ones should go directly to a trauma center instead. Additionally, the bill would encourage more hospitals to become trauma centers.

"Advocates have been fighting for a trauma system for years, saying residents who live far from trauma centers — such as many residents in rural areas of Kentucky — have a greater chance of dying after car accidents or other trauma because they can't get to the hospitals best able to handle their injuries quickly enough," the C-J reports. (Read more)

The bill had faced some opposition from smaller, rural hospitals that feared such a system would mean the loss of patients to bigger hospitals designated as trauma centers.