The city of Omaha announced late Tuesday that it would begin transporting all trauma patients to the emergency department at Nebraska Medicine.
Since Aug. 1, the city has alternated between the med center and CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center. Late Monday, the state of Nebraska Health and Human Services Department announced that the CHI facility was no longer certified as a Level 1 trauma center. The Nebraska Medicine trauma program obtained comprehensive certification over the summer.
“We are ready for this,” CEO Bill Dinsmoor said in an email sent to all Nebraska Medicine staff Tuesday evening. “This has truly been a team effort from when we announced our intention to go 24/7 last year. And we’ve done extremely well.”
Dinsmoor said the focus should continue to be on the patients. He said work and planning by the emergency, trauma and inpatient nursing teams have created new capacity in the ED and within the hospital.
“We’ll continue to be ready to meet the demands of the community regardless of what happens outside of our campus,” Dinsmoor said.
Med center leaders announced last spring that it would begin offering 24/7 trauma care Aug. 1, 2014. In years prior, Omaha used a two-hospital trauma system made up of the med center and Creighton University Medical Center. After the med center announced its departure from the shared system, CHI Health officials announced its facility would also offer 24/7 trauma service.
Nebraska Medicine expects to soon begin the process of applying for verification with the American College of Surgeons. That designation is considered the gold standard for trauma care and is only available to hospitals with stand-alone full-time trauma service.
In this video, Dinsmoor also suggested Nebraska Medicine staff members “take the high road” when discussing the issue.