EDINBURG — In celebration of the anniversary of becoming the first Level 1 Trauma Center south of San Antonio, DHR Health dedicated its trauma unit to a renowned physician who helped them reach that goal.
The hospital’s trauma unit was renamed the Dr. Kenneth Mattox Trauma Unit during a ceremony Tuesday morning in honor of the distinguished service professor at Baylor College of Medicine.
“To have something named after you is very humbling and very sobering,” Mattox said to the media before the ceremony. “My name is on this institution but time will dull the memory of my name, but they will remember that research that we did, the standards that we’ve created. And in future years, I want people who go through the doors of this facility to say ‘We’ve got to raise that bar because if we don’t, the ghost of Mattox is going to haunt us to say, ‘Why aren’t you doing better?’”
Mattox consulted DHR Health in its efforts to earn the Level 1 Trauma Center designation last year.
He said he provided recommendations and gave them a timetable.
“But it is their work that is achieved,” Mattox said. “I nudged them along the way.”
He said he helped write the original standards for trauma center designations and also helped rewrite them, so he was able to advise DHR Health on what standards they needed to meet for the designation.
As a Level 1 trauma center, DHR Health must be able to provide the highest level of trauma care possible in the country. A facility is verified a Level 1 trauma center by the American College of Surgeons and is then designated as such by the state.
DHR Health was the first facility in the Rio Grande Valley to achieve this accomplishment, but soon South Texas Health System is expected to do the same.
Earlier this month, STHS announced the ACS verified STHS McAllen, formerly known as McAllen Medical Center, as a Level 1 trauma center. They are currently awaiting the designation from the state.
To have a Level 1 trauma center in the Valley means patients will have access to specialists 24/7, without having to travel 240 miles to receive treatment for a complex injury.
“That vision of treating traumatic injuries here instead of transferring the patients to hospitals miles away has come to fruition,” said Dr. Manish Singh, CEO of DHR Health. “And over the past year, our trauma and emergency department teams have used the tools, the services, the training that comes with being a designated Level 1 trauma center to provide the critical and essential life-saving health care to our patients.”
He credited Mattox for spearheading advances in trauma and critical care and praised his passion for innovation.
“The trauma unit will not only bear your name from here on out, Dr. Mattox, but will serve as a mark of the highest quality standard,” Singh added, “because we were able to accomplish this milestone with the knowledge and guidance from you.”
The hospital is continuing to add services at its trauma unit that weren’t previously available in South Texas, according to Dr. Jeffrey Skubic, trauma medical director.
“We now have the ability to fix thoracic aortic injuries right here in the Valley, and, until now, 100% of these patients with a terrible aortic injury were sent north for hundreds of miles,” Skubic said, “but now we can fix them here.”
Gov. Greg Abbott took part in the celebration, congratulating everyone who played a role in enabling DHR to earn the designation including health care leaders and state legislators.
“I have never been to a region or to a locale in the state of Texas where you have health care leaders who are constantly trying to advance the expansion of health care in your region and urging to work with state leaders to make sure that that goal is achieved,” Abbott said.
“So candidly, as a community,” Abbott continued, “you should applaud your community leaders for being so persistent and persevering in prevailing upon the state to make sure the state is stepping up and doing everything that it should be doing to help out the improvement of access to health care here in the RGV.”
To see more, view Monitor photojournalist Joel Martinez’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: DHR Health renames trauma unit on anniversary of Level 1 designation
