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    Level IV Trauma Center

    As a Level IV Trauma Center, Livingston Hospital has been recognized for its ability to rapidly identify, treat and transfer those patients with life threatening injuries, with a goal of having the patient to definitive care within 60 minutes of their injury.

    This means that you can count on us to better serve the community—especially when it comes to emergency and critical care situations. We follow established guidelines for identifying seriously injured or potentially seriously injured individuals who will benefit from assessment and care by our trained Trauma Team. 

    All the providers who work in our Emergency Department have completed Advanced Trauma Life Support training. In addition, Emergency Department nurses and Surgery nurses have completed Advanced Cardiac Life Support certification and have also received certification in the Trauma Nurse Core Course (TNCC). This critical training allows for rapid identification of life-threatening injuries, comprehensive patient assessment, and enhanced intervention for better patient outcomes.

    In addition, patients who arrive at Livingston Hospital in need of trauma surgery can count on being treated by a surgeon who is on-site and dedicated to the hospital. The surgeon can help speed the patient through their course of care so that the patient gets seen sooner, evaluated sooner, and operated on sooner, if surgery is needed, which leads to quicker recovery.
     
    Benefits of being a Trauma Center
    When a hospital becomes a designated trauma facility, it receives increased traffic from the emergency medical services (EMS) agencies that already come there. Additionally, the facility also starts receiving traffic from EMS agencies that traditionally went to other facilities. Once emergency medical technicians and paramedics get comfortable with a certain emergency department, they start going there more frequently. The EMS no longer comes to the trauma-designated hospital just for trauma, they start bringing chest pain patients, stroke patients and patients with a wide array of conditions to that trauma-designated hospital as well. Trauma-designated hospitals simply have busier Emergency Departments.
     
    The “halo effect” also impacts the remainder of the hospital simply because the ED gets busier — the inpatient beds are filled more quickly and regularly, there are significantly more higher-acuity patients so there are more X-rays needed, more laboratory tests ordered and more patients who need the rehab facilities.
     
    Another key benefit of being a trauma-designated hospital is that the trauma program serves as a process improvement program. Trauma designation raises the bar throughout the hospital.



     
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