University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center is now the only hospital facility in Lorain County with a trauma designation.
On Oct. 15, Mercy Health-Lorain Hospital and MetroHealth Medical Center ended the Level III trauma program in Lorain.
RELATED: Mercy Health ending trauma program at Lorain Hospital
UH Elyria is preparing for what’s to come.
“It’s really hard to know exactly how this is going to impact us,” said UH Elyria Medical Center Chief Medical Officer and Emergency Medical Physician, Dr. Elizabeth Streby. “Based on our EMS volumes, I would suspect we will get a very large portion of transports from what had been going from Mercy to Elyria.”
I reached out to LifeCare Ambulance Inc, which is the largest EMS service provider in Lorain County. In 2023, the transport company received approximately 3,731 initial trauma calls. Of those, 2,174 patients went to Mercy Health-Lorain, while 1,433 went to UH Elyria, which is a difference of 741 patients.
Streby said they’re looking at the potential increase.
“It’s a lot of infrastructure, not just nursing and physician providers but other things like laboratory resources, radiology resources, space,” she said.
The Level III Trauma program at UH Elyria began in 2021.
“When you develop a trauma center, you add the resources to the hospital, you provide a comprehensive quality assessment program, you put resources into training of nurses and other allied health professionals,” said Streby. “You create a small center of excellence for patients to come and receive care in their community but then transfer those high-risk patients that need tertiary care services out of the community.”
Streby said Level III Trauma centers are set up to manage patients who come in with moderate to even high-risk trauma.
“It could be anything from cutting yourself, sharp penetrating trauma, gunshot wounds, car accidents, falls,” she said. “Most people think that trauma centers deal with the gunshot wounds and the really exciting trauma but the vast majority of traumas that come into the emergency department are related to falls.”
UH Elyria is about 20 minutes or 11 miles from Mercy Health-Lorain.
“For the most part, people should just go to their local emergency departments to get care, we'll sort the rest out for them and that’s really what they should worry about,” she said.
“In emergency departments across Northeast Ohio, you can rest assured that they will be able to take care of your family members and patients that come through the door, board certified and emergency medicine trained physicians know how to do this. They can stabilize you, the patient, and send them to wherever they need to go.”
UH Elyria renewed its trauma verification through the American College of Surgeons for the next three years.
“One of the strengths that I see at this hospital is a core group of people who work here, the nurses, the physicians have dedicated many of their careers…to this hospital and this community.”
