A bill that aimed to increase access to trauma care in rural Nevada has been watered down due to legislative politics.
Assembly Bill 326 originally proposed designating rural critical access hospitals as trauma level IV centers. This would have provided the facilities with more training, education, and opportunities to respond to major incidents.
Currently, there are no trauma centers outside of Reno and Las Vegas. The training would go a long way, said Blayne Osborn, president of Nevada Rural Hospital Partners.
“For us, it’s about developing the trauma teams, the trained physicians and nurses in the rural emergency room,” Osborn said. “It’s not so much about preventing the transport, but it’s about giving the patients higher level of care quicker.”
Receiving proper care within the first hour of a trauma, known as the golden hour, is crucial, according to Toni Inserra, administrator of the South Lyon Medical Center in Yerington.
“It can truly be a matter of life or death. We had an agricultural injury, and it took 45 minutes to even get here,” Inserra said.
However, the legislation now directs the state to conduct a study of Nevada’s current trauma care system and present the findings to the governor and legislature.
The bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Gregory Koenig, was frustrated. He alleged the Culinary Union opposed the bill behind closed doors because of a trauma classification dispute between two Las Vegas hospitals.
“That’s my big frustration, is I can't do things that help the rurals because the big cities are going to squash bills that help the rurals when it doesn’t really affect them in the urbans,” Koenig said. “But unions are powerful when they oppose something. It's pretty tough to overcome that.”
The Culinary Union declined to comment, but provided a statement from the Health Services Coalition, which said in part, “Trauma care is tightly regulated for a reason: to protect patients, ensure quality, and control costs. Too much trauma designation drains resources and does not improve care.”
Meanwhile, Koenig is pretty confident in what the study would say.
“I would anticipate that the study is going to say, ‘Yes, category four emergency rooms in the rurals is a positive thing for the state.’ And so it might make it a little bit more difficult to oppose it next time,” Koenig said.
Koenig said he’ll fight for the designation during the next legislative session in 2027. The bill can also still change before this session ends. The legislation hasn’t received a floor vote yet.
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