Cook County Commissioner Monica Gordon said Monday she’s working with leadership of Southland hospitals to explore establishing another hospital trauma center, stating “the life expectancy of citizens” suffering traumas such as gunshot wounds is being jeopardized.
Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn is the only Level 1 trauma center in the south and southwest suburbs.
The state Level 1 designation indicates the highest level of trauma care, although there are also hospitals with Level 2, such as Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, and Level 3 designations. Level 1 trauma centers offer round-the-clock care with on-site specialists.
The University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago is also a Level 1 trauma hospital, as is Cook County’s Stroger Hospital.
“I’m not talking about building a trauma center from the ground up,” Gordon said.
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She said it is possible a hospital such as UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, Advocate South Suburban in Hazel Crest or Franciscan Health Hospital in Olympia Fields could be modified to become a trauma center.
“Right now, if there is a gunshot victim, they have to go all the way to Christ, and the time it takes to get there depends on the traffic,” Gordon said.
Gordon was elected last fall to represent Cook County’s 5th District and succeed retiring commissioner Deborah Sims. South suburbs in the district include Chicago Heights, Harvey and Riverdale.
Gordon held a news conference Sunday outside of Ingalls, where, she said, south suburban residents face long wait times for emergency room help and staffing isn’t sufficient.
“I’m not blaming the staff at all,” Gordon said Monday. “They are doing the best they can do.”
Early Walker, chief executive of I’m Telling, Don’t Shoot, a community organization that aims to curb gun violence, shared at the news conference a visit to Ingalls’ emergency department by his mother.
Walker said his mother had collapsed recently at a school facility in Harvey and suffered a head wound and was bleeding profusely. He said there was a 45-minute wait for an ambulance then an extended wait in the emergency room.
Ingalls Memorial merged with University of Chicago Medicine in October 2016.
The hospital system said it couldn’t comment directly on the treatment of Walker’s mother, citing patient privacy, but it said it “remains committed to providing high-quality care to all patients in all the communities served by the health system.”
Gordon said the crisscrossing of multiple freight rail lines in the south suburbs adds to travel time to a trauma center. Also, she said, the closing in recent years of hospitals and emergency rooms at St. James in Chicago Heights and MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island has made the trip more difficult to get a trauma patient to an emergency room and stabilized before being taken to a Level 1 center.
She said a south suburban trauma center is a priority for her, and a study of the cost of opening and operating one is planned.
“We’re at the infancy stage of doing what we can to make this happen,” Gordon said.
She said that she is reaching out to hospital leadership at Ingalls and other local hospitals about her goal.
“We want to connect with hospital leadership of any of those hospitals to make this happen,” Gordon said.
University of Chicago Medicine opened its Level 1 trauma unit on Chicago’s South Side in the spring of 2018, and noted “trauma programs are an expensive and demanding public service.”
“Trauma systems must be planned and coordinated by the city and the state, in consultation with trauma program experts and healthcare providers throughout the Chicagoland area,” U of C Medicine said.