New Orleans Gets a Formal Level 1 Trauma Care Facility

More than six months after Hurricane Katrina's landfall, a formal Level 1 trauma care facility will return to New Orleans thanks to a temporary partnership between the LSU/Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans and Ochsner Clinic Foundation.

The MCLNO will lease 50,000 square feet through the end of the year in Ochsner's Elmwood Medical Center on Clearview Parkway. The Level 1 trauma space, which will be a 40-bed facility, should open between March 15 and April 1, according to Dr. Cathi Fontenot, MCLNO medical director. The new location will temporarily replace the Level 1 trauma facility destroyed at Charity Hospital by Katrina.

Dr. Jim Aiken, LSU emergency medicine and medical director for emergency preparedness for the MCLNO, says the center is not meant to handle "minor" injuries.

"People who are complaining of heart attack or stroke symptoms or in need of a tetanus shot should still go to a regular emergency room. We are only going to be taking cases of serious traumas," Aiken said. Serious traumas include gunshot wounds, construction injuries, falls from high places and major car accidents. "Anything that could potentially require immediate life-saving surgery," Aiken said.

Emergency cases from Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes will likely be diverted to Ochsner's Elmwood facility once it opens. The MCLNO expects to spend up to $3 million on equipment and facility upgrades. The Federal Emergency Management Agency picked up the bill.

The new facility will not be ready until adjustments are made to accommodate trauma care. Operating rooms and intensive care units will be renovated and updated before the move can take place. Other day-to-day operations will still occur at Ochsner's Elmwood Medical Center. The new trauma center is important to restoring needed services to the New Orleans area but its Elmwood location is "strictly a bridge for trauma center care before we get back into University Hospital later this year," Aiken said.

Aiken said the MCLNO hopes to transfer Level 1 trauma care back to University Hospital within six months. Makeshift operations Level 1 trauma service has not been provided by a hospital in the New Orleans area since Katrina. Previously, Charity and University Hospitals offered the service. The nearest official Level 1 trauma center is at LSU Medical Center in Shreveport. The closest thing to a Level 1 trauma care center in New Orleans since the storm has been an emergency services unit in Hall J of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The Medical Center of Louisiana has treated about 300 patients a day at the Convention Center and the Hutchinson Building on Tulane Avenue, across from Charity Hospital. The Hutchinson clinic, open from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, treats primary care services such as HIV care and adult internal medicine while the Convention Center operation is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

ER overcrowding

The lack of a formal Level 1 trauma center placed an additional strain on operational hospitals. Fontenot said opening this facility is a "release valve" that will take some pressure off hospital emergency room staffs. "The functional hospitals have been stretched to capacity with their beds full and patients waiting for beds," Fontenot said.

Warner Thomas, president and chief operating officer of Ochsner, said much of the city's trauma care has been rotated between Ochsner, West Jefferson Medical Center and East Jefferson General Hospital. Thomas would not disclose how much it cost Ochsner to provide this space at the Elmwood facility. Thomas said Ochsner believes in the trauma service so much that officials asked LSU Health Sciences Center to provide a temporary home for the center. After the Elmwood trauma center opens, some patients at LSUHSC will be transferred to Ochsner's main campus on Jefferson Highway. Ochsner's skilled nursing and psychiatry units must also be transferred from Elmwood to the main campus.

The staff at East Jefferson welcomes the new Level 1 facility. "It will help free up resources and staffing so that we can handle more day-to-day patients," said Cheryl Carter, director of the emergency department at East Jefferson. "It's also going to help decrease patient wait time."

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