“We already know that healthcare resources are inequitably distributed across the United States,” said David Metcalfe, a clinical research fellow in musculoskeletal trauma at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and co-author of the study, which was published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
Here are five things to know from the study.
1. States with the highest density of surgical critical care providers include Maine, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan and North Dakota, while Alaska, Georgia, Oklahoma and New Mexico had the lowest density, according to 2013 data used in the study.
2. Trauma centers are designated in levels I through V based on the kinds of resources they have. Level I trauma centers can provide care for every aspect of an injury, while Level V centers have basic emergency department resources. The Mid Atlantic and South Atlantic regions and larger cities across the U.S. had the most Level I and Level II trauma centers, according to Reuters.
3. As the density of surgical critical care providers increased, mortality rates declined. For each additional trauma center per million people, there was a decrease of 618 deaths per year, according to the report.
4. There are various factors that account for why certain regions have a deficient supply of surgical critical care providers, including “whether local hospitals have the resources that are necessary to achieve trauma center accreditation, whether or not local trauma services are profitable, and difficulties recruiting trauma specialists to some areas,” Mr. Metcalfe told Reuters.
5. Currently, there is no agency or regulatory body with the authority to force regions to establish or build trauma centers, said Edward Kelly, MD, of burn and trauma surgery at Boston-based Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who was not part of the study. However, “some markets are saturated, and others are underserved,” he said, according to Reuters. This poses another issue, because regions with an excess of trauma centers might only treat a small number of critically injured patients. “… Hospitals and individual specialists risk losing their expertise if they only treat a small number of patients each year,” said Dr. Kelly, according to the report.
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