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Beebe provides $200,000 to start work on trauma system Friday, Jul 11, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Saying he expects the Legislature next year to approve funding for a multimillion-dollar statewide system of trauma centers, Gov. Mike Beebe released $200,000 from the governor's emergency fund Thursday to pay for preliminary work on the project. "This is really the first starting point of what is necessary in order to be able to have the kind of information, the kind of coordination, the kind of communication that ultimately a trauma system will have to have as a baseline in order to even go forward," Beebe said during a news conference at the state Capitol. The governor said the money would help create a database that emergency personnel can access quickly to determine which hospitals have specialists available to treat different types of injuries. "If you are involved in a trauma ... all of the people who initially respond can best serve and help and aid if they have a place or a mechanism where they know they can go find out where the nearest, best place to treat whatever that particular kind of injury is," he said. The type of system Arkansas adopts, and the funding source for it, will be determined during next year's regular legislative session, Beebe said. The cost of a system can vary from several million dollars to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, he said. Trauma centers are classified as Level 1, 2 or 3 centers, with Level 1 centers offering the highest level of care. "Obviously, if you have five Level 1 trauma centers ... that costs a lot more than if you have one Level 1 trauma center," Beebe said. Some of the $200,000 will be used to obtain advice from consultants, said Paul Halverson, director of the state Department of Health. He said he did not know how soon a system could be fully implemented because he did not know what plan the Legislature would pass. Dr. Joe Thompson, the state's chief health officer, said Arkansas is behind the rest of the nation in offering coordinated trauma care. "We're the only state that has no trauma centers. We have good hospitals that provide good care, but it's not coordinated care across all the hospitals and with the transportation and other providers," Thompson said. A bill to create a statewide trauma system was debated during the 2007 regular session, but the session ended before the House and Senate could reach an agreement on how to pay the cost, then estimated at $25 million. The House favored increasing some court fees, while the Senate supported adding a fee to auto insurance premiums. Rep. Robbie Wills, D-Conway, the incoming House speaker, said in an interview Thursday the Legislature "got started late" on the issue during the 2007 session but will not be in that position next year. "We've been working on this since the last session, so we're hoping to build a consensus and have an agreement going into the debate, as opposed to doing what we did last time, which was coming at it from two different angles," he said. Beebe said he is not aware of any consensus now among lawmakers, but he is working to help discussions along. He said he usually does a lot of groundwork in advance of any proposal. "In fact, I got criticized for doing too much groundwork without bringing the Legislature in on the severance tax," Beebe said, referring to the severance tax increase he pushed through the Legislature during a special session this spring. "But it worked out I think that most people ended up happy," he said. |
