Friday, December 14, 2007

Questions arise over hospital choice and shooting victims

E-mails from Penrose-St. Francis Health Services alerting media to the fact that three victims from the Dec. 9 shootings at New Life Church had been transported to Penrose Hospital near downtown Colorado Springs, included this paragraph:

“A significant amount of public and national media requests have been received asking why victims were transported downtown, bypassing the city's two new hospitals. Penrose Main Hospital on Nevada Avenue is a full-service Level II trauma hospital. The new St. Francis Medical Center on the corner of East Woodmen Road and Powers Boulevard will also be a full-service hospital able to handle trauma patients but is not scheduled to open until August 2008.”

What the paragraph omits: The new Memorial Hospital North, which opened in April and is the closest hospital to New Life Church, is operated by Penrose-St. Francis’ competitor and is not equipped to handle trauma patients.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This doesn't make sense. If neither of the North hospitals are equipped to treat trauma patients, what is the big deal? If the last line should have read that Memorial North could treat trauma patients, then that is a different matter.

Bill, The Meat Man said...

This doesn't make sense. If neither hospital could accept trauma patients in their nort facilities, what difference does it make?
Perhaps the last line was not written correctly.

Anonymous said...

If Memorial Hospital North is not equipped to handle trauma, why does it have a heli-pad?

Debbie Kelley said...

Memorial Hospital North cannot take care of trauma patients. The staff can stabilize trauma patients, but then they have to be transported to a facility with higher capabilities.

That's the reason for the heli-pad. The hospital's air ambulance service will transport trauma patients who come to the hospital but need trauma care.

The air ambulance transports those patients to either Memorial's central hospital near downtown, Penrose Hospital also near downtown or another facility, such as the Children's Hospital in Denver.