Marian Regional Medical Level II Trauma Center provides top care for growing Santa Maria community
By Ann Piccininni
When immediate and high-level medical care is required to address serious trauma injuries, Marian Regional Medical Center is prepared.
The hospital, at 1400 E. Church Street in Santa Maria, is the only Level II Trauma Center within a 100-mile radius.
“We can take care of any type of trauma at any time. The whole goal is to keep patients from our county in our area,” said trauma surgeon Dr. Lars Ola Sjoholm, who serves as the medical center’s trauma program director.
Sjoholm said often in cases of severe trauma, immediate treatment is essential and sometimes even lifesaving. Marian Regional Medical Center is ready to take on those challenges.
The Level II Trauma Center verification was conferred upon the center by the Verification Review Committee, an ad hoc committee of the Committee on Trauma of the American College of Surgeons, in June 2022.
“Santa Barbara formally acknowledged the change in status and changed the ambulance destination in September 2023,” nursing manager Lisa Abeloe said.
“Marian is incredibly proud to have achieved verification as a Level II Trauma Center and for the ability to provide our community comprehensive trauma care and around-the-clock coverage of essential specialties, personnel and equipment,” President and CEO Sue Andersen said.
The more advanced trauma level status indicates the medical center is able to provide more resources and a higher level of care for the community, Abeloe said.
Before Marian earned its Level II Trauma Center status, some patients with serious trauma injuries would be transported out of the area.
“We would have to transfer them to the Bay area or Fresno or Los Angeles,” Sjoholm said.
Travel time could seriously impact patients’ outcomes.
“It happens frequently. Some of the patients that come in here, they wouldn’t be alive if we had to transfer them,” Sjoholm said.
Since the Level II verification, transfers to other facilities have been reduced by nearly 50%.
“I would say there was at least one patient a month that would have been sent to a facility further away, but now we are able to care for them here at Marian,” Abeloe said. “We used to transfer out about 15% of our critical trauma patients. At this time, we only transfer less than 8%. Most of the transfers now are for burn patients needing a burn center, or critically injured children.”
But, she added, Marian Regional is seeing more trauma patients overall as the population increases.
“We have taken care of more than 300 patients a year, over what we saw prior to becoming a Level II Trauma Center,” Abeloe said. “The number of patients with major trauma has increased by 25%. In addition, the number of patients in our ICU for traumatic injuries has increased dramatically.”
With surgeons and specialists available in the emergency room, the medical center can treat intense trauma during the critical “golden hour” after injury, said Bette Jenkins, Marian’s trauma program manager.
“The geographical area that we serve is quite big. Sometimes, it takes 20 to 30 minutes to get here. I remember the first time we took a patient directly from the emergency room to the operating room,” she said.
“It involves a lot of logistics, a lot of training,” Sjoholm said. “Everyone here is very engaged and enthusiastic and excited about it.”
Abeloe said the Level II verification is important to meet the growing needs of the rapidly growing Santa Maria area.
“The number of patients is increasing all the time. As the population of Santa Maria increases, we see more patients,” she said.
Marian Regional Medical Center has hired more surgeons, including orthopedic traumatologists, along with more support staff.
As a Level II Trauma Center, surgeons are either available in the emergency room or can be summoned to the emergency room within 15 minutes.
“Every hospital has surgeons but, in some cases, if a patient needs a surgeon suddenly in the middle of the night, the surgeon might be at home. At Marian, we have surgeons available around the clock,” Abeloe said. “You don’t think about who’s going to take care of you when you have an accident. Here at Marian, we have the resources.”
She said many trauma patients are people injured in vehicle accidents or elderly people sustaining head injuries after falling.
Sjoholm said neurosurgeons, facial surgeons, interventional radiologists and other specialists need to be readily available for critically injured patients.
The medical center now has two ECMO machines – extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines.
“Some of the trauma patients go into respiratory failure,” Sjoholm said. In some cases, conventional methods of treating this condition, including ventilators, are not sufficient.
“The ECMO delivers oxygen directly into the bloodstream. With the few patients that we’ve had to use it with, it’s been a real lifesaver. It’s huge that we have these resources here,” Sjoholm said.
“We are becoming a regional medical center and helping patients from San Luis Obispo County stay closer to home,” Abeloe said. “The hospitals in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties transfer patients to Marian when they don’t have the capabilities or specialty services to care for them. We have seen about a 34% increase since 2022 in our trauma transfers from outlying facilities.”
