Medical trauma center planned for Pomona

The much-needed facility would be located at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, which maintained a trauma center up until financial concerns forced the facility to close nearly three decades ago. Since then, the closest trauma centers have been in Los Angeles and Pasadena, and everyone agrees that system is not acceptable.

For the first time since nearly 30 years, Pomona is close to having its own medical trauma center.

The plan, proposed by the Los Angeles County Department of Emergency Services, would locate the trauma center at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, which was home to the western Inland Empire’s last trauma center until it was shut down in 1987.

The project must be approved by the Board of Supervisors and certified by the American College of Surgeons, a process that could take more than one year, according to county officials.

However long it takes, and regardless of the cost – trauma centers typically require at least several million dollars to get started and after that are expensive to keep up – the project will happen, said Cathy Chidester, director of the county emergency services department.

“It’s something we’ve been looking at for a long time,” said Chidester, who said Pomona Valley Hospital officials were immediately interested when the county proposed the idea several years ago. “It has to happen, because there is such a need for it in that part of the community.”

In January, Supervisors Hilda Solis and Mike Antonovich introduced a motion declaring that the county would establish a trauma center at Pomona Valley Hospital. The medical facility probably would serve Pomona, La Verne, San Dimas, Claremont and other parts of the Inland Empire’s west end.

“Pomona is the logical place,” Chidester said. “It has great freeway access, so it’s easy to get to, and they’ve done it before.”

Solis began pushing for more trauma centers as soon as she joined the board at the end of last year. Last month, she visited the hospital on Garey Avenue next to Interstate 10 to learn more about how to set up a trauma center there.

It’s not an easy task. For several reasons, trauma centers are hard to establish and maintain. They require expensive equipment and staffs of nurses and physicians that, besides being trained in the art of trauma care, must be on call 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

“A trauma center is a lot more expensive than a regular hospital, and they’re harder to keep together,” Chidester said. “You almost have to find younger doctors, because if you work in a trauma center you’re on call all of the time. Older doctors aren’t usually as willing to do that.”

Trauma calls make up no more than three percent of all 911 calls, Chidester said.

“There aren’t very many of them, but they’re still important,” Chidester said. “Trauma care is a crucial part of any health care system.”

The contract between Los Angeles County and Pomona Valley Hospital that will determine how the facility will be paid for, and which communities it will serve, is being negotiated.

Because those talks are ongoing, hospital officials are declining to comment on their likely return to the trauma center network, said Frank Garcia, hospital spokesman.

One source of funding is Measure B, a tax passed by county voters that raises money to pay for an expanded and refurbished trauma network. Measure B reportedly generates about $250 million a year.

Because the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has reduced the number of uninsured Americans, it now makes more sense economically to set up more trauma centers, Solis said.

Putting a trauma center in Pomona would fill a major gap in the region’s emergency medical response network. During the mid-1980s, Los Angeles County boasted 22 trauma centers, but several of those had to shut down because of a lack of funding.

Two of those that closed were Pomona Valley Hospital and the trauma center at Queen of the Valley Hospital [now Citrus Valley Medical Center-Queen of the Valley Campus] in West Covina.

For nearly three decades, the closest trauma centers to Pomona have been Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles and Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, both of which are approximately 30 miles away.

People who suffer more severe trauma cases – a serious automobile accident, a gunshot victim or someone injured in a natural disaster – in the Pomona area are taken by helicopter to one of those two facilities, said Jaime Garcia, regional vice president of the Hospital Association of Southern California, a non-profit in Los Angeles.

Trauma victims with injuries that aren’t considered life threatening are taken to a local hospital, stabilized, and then transported to one of the two Los Angeles trauma centers if necessary, Garcia said.

“The trauma system shrank during the late 80’s and early 90’s because there were a lot of financial pressures at that time, and trauma centers are expensive to run,” Garcia said. “Now the county is looking to bring some of them back, and that’s good. Pomona needs it. Any time you bring a trauma center into a community it’s a good thing.”

Pomona officials support the new trauma center, and they’re going to do whatever they can to make the facility happen, said Mark Gluba, deputy city manager.

“The city is going to welcome any improvements in its health care system,” Gluba said. “It’s something that comes up in conversations, the fact that the city hasn’t had a trauma center for a long time. I can’t put a number on it, but anecdotally it’s something that gets talked about.”

Chidester predicted that the Pomona trauma center could be up and running by next year at this time, and HASC’s Garcia said that organization – a trade association for the hospital industry – hopes that it won’t take that long.

“We’re hoping it starts sometime next year, but we’re just glad that there’s a plan in place,” he said.