Nouvelles
Telegraph-Journal
p. A1, vendredi, 21 novembre 2008
Trauma system delayed
The elite group of about 20 health professionals and consultants won't be ready to make a presentation to the provincial government until about June, which will be too late for the 2009 budget, confirmed Dr. Dennis Furlong.
Amalgamation of the province's eight former regional health authorities into two is at least partly to blame, he said.
The trauma advisory committee and its subcommittees had to be restructured to have representatives from the two new RHAs. Committee members were just firmed up on Thursday. So that set the process back by about three or four months, said Furlong, a former Conservative health minister and Dalhousie family doctor.
"Restructuring is the timbers that sit under the system and that had to take a priority "¦ So (the trauma system) got delayed, but I think for good reason."
The committee's previous work, establishing directives and terms of reference about treating the province's most severely injured patients, hasn't changed, he stressed. "We have that critical plan in place, so we're hitting the ground running as of (Thursday).
"Hopefully now we can move the agenda."
The advisory committee had planned initially to deliver a proposal to Health Minister Mike Murphy last February, so decisions could be made in time for the 2008 budget.
Now it won't be a budget item until 2010 at the earliest - nearly five years after a head-on collision involving a Tracadie-Sheila man demonstrated the need for a provincial trauma system.
Donald Thomas sustained multiple serious injuries, including a broken neck, a closed head injury, a cardiac contusion, collapsed lung, and lacerations to his liver and spleen. Although he needed immediate attention, he waited more than 12 hours before being treated in
"Whatever the messaging was in the past, I think probably March/08 was an ambitious goal, no question about that," Furlong said. "There's a lot of work to do."
Murphy could not be reached on Thursday for comment.
"I wouldn't want people to think that because the trauma system is not in place right now that any given trauma that would occur is not going to be managed adequately," Furlong said.
"We're trying to refine a system that's already in place," he said. "It's not as if there's some major deficit in the health-care system right now because of the lack of this and it has to be done urgently.
"What we want to achieve with having a trauma system is to have it mesh together so that there's no second-guessing about where the patient goes, how the patient goes and who's going to care for the patient once the patient arrives. So it's a streamlining of what already is there.
"We're going to try to push it as rapidly as we can, but we want to get it done right, not fast. And we're in that process."
Once approved, the system will still take about three years to fully implement, Furlong said.
It's expected to cost several million dollars, with most of the funds being spent on hiring new specialists and trauma nurses.
Eighteen hospitals in
The trauma advisory committee and subcommittees, which include representatives from the two health authorities, two expert consultants and ambulance officials, are assessing what refinements each hospital needs in order to make the best use of its resources.
To that end, Murray J. Girotti, a consultant on the committee, was in
Some of the issues the committees are focusing on include pre-hospital care such as response to 911 calls, inter-hospital transfers and ground versus air transport; medical and non-medical human resources; establishing a 1-800 number so any
The advisory committee will meet again in December. Furlong expects it will meet monthly until about June. It will also receive monthly progress reports from the various subcommittees, he said.