Study gives Indiana low emergency care marks

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new study of the nation's emergency care system finds that Indiana residents have poor access to certified trauma centers and emergency physicians.\nThe American College of Emergency Physicians report released Tuesday gave Indiana an overall D-plus mark, ranking it 44th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.\nMuch of the report's criticism for Indiana's system centered on the lack of top-level trauma care across the state, as Indiana ranked 47th in the number of certified trauma centers per 1 million residents.\nMethodist Hospital and Wishard Memorial Hospital, both in Indianapolis, are the only Level I trauma centers in the state as certified by the American College of Surgeons. St. Mary's Medical Center in Evansville, Parkview Memorial Hospital in Fort Wayne and Memorial Hospital of South Bend are all Level II trauma centers.\nIndiana's poor national ranking surprised the president of the group's state chapter.\n"I think it's a little bit of a lower rating than we were expecting," Dr. B.P. House, the director of emergency medicine at Fort Wayne's Lutheran Hospital, said. "I think in the majority of areas you're going to get good quality emergency care."\nThe group found that across the country, the emergency system is overcrowded, with poor capacity to deal with public health or terrorist disasters.\nOverall, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and the District of Columbia were rated best in emergency care, all with grades of B. The lowest grades, all of D, went to Utah, Idaho and Arkansas.\nACEP's report pointed to areas where improvements are needed, said Charles Shufflebarger, the medical director of emergency medicine at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. \n"I don't think it says anything about the quality of medical care for any individual getting treated today," he said. "I think the purpose of ACEP doing this is to identify areas that each state could improve in."\nThe report ranked Indiana 18th nationally for the number of hospital-staffed beds -- 2.87 per 1,000 people -- and cited the state's low rate of alcohol-related automobile fatalities.\nHouse said Indiana needed to begin tracking how often patients were diverted from emergency rooms at one hospital to another because of insufficient capacity. He said the practice of diverting patients was a national problem.