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.