Ascension St. John Medical Center’s trauma care center has received the Level I designation from the American College of Surgeons, the hospital said Tuesday.
Level I is the ACS’ highest designation, and Ascension St. John is Tulsa’s first hospital to achieve it. The University of Oklahoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City is the state’s only other Level I trauma center.
“The American College of Surgeons treats Level I as its highest distinction, and that is the gold standard in trauma care,” Ascension St. John CEO Bo Beaudry said in an interview. “We’ve been a Level II since 2009, … and a couple years ago we made the decision to go Level I.”
Beaudry said he could not put a figure to the amount of money invested over the past two years to reach Level I, but he said doing so involved recruiting additional specialists and subspecialists in every area of emergency care.
“I’d say that the biggest thing is just the comprehensive, consistent subspecialty coverage,” Beaudry said when asked to explain the difference between Level II and Level I care. “There’s an education component; there’s a research component that are all additional parts of being a Level I, but that surgical subspecialty coverage is incredibly important — and timely — not just 24/7 but that the response time is quick.”
Beaudry said those specialties include cardiothoracic surgery, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, comprehensive stroke care, plastic surgery, facial and hand surgery, OB-GYN and urology.
“All of those physician specialties we have readily available in the event (of a) motorcycle accident, motor vehicle accident, falls, … any of those things. We’re ready to take care of patients quickly.”
Beaudry said the final push to achieve Level I status began with a conversation he had with Medical Director Michael Charles shortly after Beaudry became CEO two years ago.
Charles told Beaudry that Ascension St. John had been working toward Level I designation for some time, which prompted Beaudry to ask what would be needed to finish the task.
“I’d say we were pretty close (two years ago) in terms of the services we provided,” Beaudry said. “Just making sure we had the consistent, comprehensive coverage in all subspecialties, that we bolstered our research and some other areas, and then just that fine tuning and optimization and programmatically, of our protocols — that’s really what the last two years have been.
“It’s just been a concerted effort that we said we’re going to do this because we want to do this for the community. You know, Tulsa and eastern Oklahoma deserve a Level I, and we wanted to be the institution to do it and do it first,” Beaudry said.
Tuesday’s announcement comes just two months after the Legislature appropriated $10 million for a trauma care training program at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences in conjunction with Saint Francis Health System.
In a statement issued after Tuesday’s announcement, Saint Francis said it “congratulates Ascension Saint John on the milestone of achieving Level I Trauma designation. We are proud to see trauma care expanding in our community. As Tulsa grows, access to multiple Level I Trauma Centers is not only possible — it’s necessary. Saint Francis Hospital is nearing the final stages of its own journey to Level I, reinforcing our legacy of advanced, life-saving care in the region.”
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