Pattye Benson

Community Matters

Paoli Hospital

Paoli Hospital to Become Designated Level II Trauma Center for Chester County

Today it was announced that the Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation has accredited Main Line Health member Paoli Hospital as a Level II Trauma Center. For a hospital to operate as a Level II Trauma Center requires a volume of 350 major trauma patients per year. Chester County is the only county in southeastern Pennsylvania that does not have a trauma center. Since Brandywine Hospital closed in 2002, there has not been a designated trauma center in Chester County but that will change come October 1.

After Paoli Hospital’s $145 million patient care pavilion project opened in 2009, the hospital volunteered to serve as Chester County’s trauma center. With the four-story pavilion project nearly doubling the hospital’s size and the expansion of the emergency department, the administration suggested that the hospital had room for a trauma center and applied for that designation. Today it was announced that Paoli Hospital received the accreditation.

I am not clear how Paoli Hospital is going to fund this new trauma center. After major fund-raising for the pavilion project, it is estimated that the trauma center will cost approximately $7 million for the first year and continuing to rise each year.

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