St. Joseph Health CEO on reassignment to Level III trauma center
BRYAN, Texas – St. Joseph Regional Health Center, previously designated as a Level II trauma center, has been reassigned to a Level III trauma center. This change implies that the closest Level II or Level I trauma center to Bryan-College Station residents is now either in Temple or Houston.
Reassignment Based on Community Needs
The President and CEO of St. Joseph Health, Kim Shaw, clarified that the reassignment was primarily due to the community’s requirements. She informed, “The Level II mandates an in-house operating room team with a swift response time of 15 minutes, available round the clock. This prompts an expedited response from our on-call surgeons and other specialties. Level III, on the other hand, stipulates an operating room response time within 30 minutes.”
She also highlighted that with over 1,500 trauma activations annually at St. Joseph’s Bryan facility, less than 1% of patients required immediate surgery that Level II demands. Shaw expressed, “We were not fully utilizing our staff, including nursing and anesthesia, particularly during the nighttime when there were no active cases. In light of nationwide workforce shortages and the challenges to acquire staff, we need to use our resources wisely while serving our community.”
Continuity in Healthcare Services
Shaw stressed that the shift in designation will not compromise the quality of care provided. “We retain our on-call trauma team and helicopter service. We are also introducing a secondary helicopter in Centerville. Our commitment to trauma care remainsis unaltered. The expected response time isn’t mandatory with the kind of trauma cases we encounter in our community,” emphasized Shaw.
When discussing how this alteration impacts community health services, she noted that, “the severity of trauma care necessitated wouldn’t be clear until the time EMS reaches the incident site. We’ll stabilize patients exhibiting conditions beyond our specialty at our ER, like we’ve done for years, and then transfer them to a Level I trauma center.
Shaw reiterated that their specialist services remain unaffected by the reassignment. “None of these services are going away. It’s more about the operating room response time and adjusting to the community’s needs,” she concluded.