The Galveston County Daily News

The University of Texas Medical Branch’s emergency room will reopen Aug. 1, closing a health care gap that worried residents and burdened other trauma centers for almost a year after Hurricane Ike.

The emergency room will receive patients by both ground and air ambulance and offer the same level of trauma care it did before the storm struck Sept. 13, officials said.

Racing to recruit staff before the August deadline, officials made the unusual move of hiring outsourcing firm EmCare to rebuild a team of 17 emergency medicine faculty that dissolved mostly out of frustration over the slow recovery of the emergency room. Terms of the contract have not been finalized.

Officials also are working to replace 100 nurses lost in a November layoff of about 2,500 people at the storm-wrecked campus.

The medical branch intends to rebuild its emergency faculty and eventually restore an emergency medicine residency program, said David Marshall, interim chief operating officer.

Officials have spent months finding new spaces for a blood bank, pharmacy, installing a mobile kitchen and replacing $3.5 million in equipment, including autoclaves to sterilize surgical tools, lost to storm surge at John Sealy Hospital.

Level 1 Months Away

Before the storm, the medical branch was home to an elite Level 1 trauma center, so designated for having every specialty — neurology, orthopedics and cardiology — in house at all times.

An emergency room is only part of a trauma center. Level 1 trauma centers also must have research and educational components, such as residency programs, and outreach efforts in trauma prevention.

Although the pre-Ike trauma services would be available Aug. 1, it could take a few more months for the trauma center to re-earn the Level 1 designation from The American College of Surgeons, officials said.

Improvements Planned

When the emergency room reopens, the hospital will have about 370 beds, including 100 for prisoners the medical branch treats in a contract with the state.

Medical branch officials say they have been using the emergency room’s downtime to make improvements in patient care.

They’ve added “child friendly” rooms to the emergency room area and will have a separate waiting room for patients ages 65 and older in need of critical care.

High And Dry

The emergency room, more than 30 feet above sea level, never took in a drop of the Hurricane Ike-driven surge. But with John Sealy Hospital down for months, emergency room staff members were forced to treat and release or stabilize and transfer patients to other hospitals.

Officials with other medical centers, emergency medical service teams and even regulators were confused by the policy.

There also were murmurs in health care circles that the medical branch, which reopened John Sealy Hospital in January with 200 beds, was “cherry-picking” patients with the means to pay and “patient dumping,” the illegal act of an emergency room refusing to treat people unable to pay. Medical branch officials denied those claims.

Brighter Mood

Under pressure by regulators, medical branch officials responded by closing the emergency room April 1 and opening a walk-in urgent care center in the same building at 901 Harborside Drive.

Before the storm, the emergency room treated about 65,000 patients a year.

Upon its return, it expects to treat about 44,000 a year, officials said.

The closure was a blow to employee morale.

But as the medical branch readies to reopen the vital center, the mood is brightening, Marshall said.

“There is a positive feeling with all the work going on and enthusiasm among staff knowing it’s really going to happen in a couple of months,” Marshall said.