Trauma Center Consulting Services

Trauma Centers have traditionally been viewed as unprofitable for a hospital, but if managed, staffed, and structured properly they can have operational and financial benefits outside the trauma department.

Our Trauma Center Consulting Services provide strategic guidance and hands-on support focused on trauma center leadership, operations management, new program development, site survey support, or clinical and financial performance improvement that is customized to meet your needs.

Key Benefits:

• Interim leadership to help improve operational, financial, and staff performance
• Clinical performance improvement plan development and implementation  
• New trauma center development guidance 
• Financial performance evaluation and improvement recommendations
• Pre- and post-site survey review corrective action planning and execution

Our consultants become part of your trauma team, collaborating with leadership and staff to provide a strategic approach with hands-on implementation support. Our offerings include: 

Interim Leadership

Vacancies in key leadership positions are a significant pain point for many trauma centers. These positions are critical to the success of a trauma program, difficult to fill, and have unique skillsets that are not intuitive to leaders from other clinical areas within a hospital.  

Nationally recognized, highly experienced nurse leaders with vast experience in trauma program operations and management, provide strong team leadership, help improve staff and operational performance, enable increased team collaboration and communication, and mentor new leadership for long-term success.

Performance Improvement

Trauma performance improvement and patient safety (PIPS) is the foundation of a successful program. Every trauma center is required to establish a plan for continuous monitoring and assessment to identify, trend, and resolve specific performance indicators related to patient care. This is a challenging practice for most trauma centers to manage.

Our team of accomplished performance improvement nurse consultants have extensive experience in trauma program performance improvement. They provide guidance on all aspects of trauma quality improvement activities including; data collection, analysis, trending, benchmarking, and outcome reporting to identify areas for improvement. They can also assist with the development and implementation of performance improvement plans.

Financial Assessment

Trauma centers can be a key driver of hospital financial performance. Effective use of the standard billing system is vital to the stability of a trauma center, but unique trauma billing codes are often not properly utilized. This can result in trauma centers not collecting all of the reimbursement money to which they are entitled.  

Our consultants conduct trauma-specific coding and billing assessments to identify areas for operational improvements to facilitate trauma center financial stability and optimize financial performance.

Site Survey

Every trauma center must undergo either an American College of Surgeons (ACS) verification or state designation site survey to ensure they continue to meet a consistent level of performance. This process takes a substantial amount of preparation time, funding, and resources. It is imperative to get it right the first time and prevent deficiencies that delay full designation or verification.  

Our consultants provide strategic guidance prior to a site survey by conducting a gap analysis and mock survey to facilitate compliance with trauma center standards to aid in achieving ACS verification or state designation. Our consultants can also assist with post review corrective action planning and execution.  

Trauma Center Development

Achieving initial trauma center designation is a complex and rigorous process that requires significant financial and resource support from a hospital. Trauma designation can provide operational and financial benefits outside the trauma department, but many hospital administrators find the process overwhelming to undertake and lack support from their team.  

Our consultants help navigate the complicated process from trauma center development through successful ACS verification or state designation. A comprehensive assessment of hospital resources, projected costs, and revenue is conducted to help determine the feasibility of trauma program development. Our consultants also provide assistance with trauma program implementation, compliance with trauma center standards, and enable readiness for ACS verification or state designation. 

Philips provides nationally recognized industry experts to deliver trauma center interim leadership and performance improvement consulting that have helped hospitals to:

• Implement a corrective action plan to assist a Level III Trauma Center regain ACS verification
• Identify a positive margin through a financial assessment that prevented closure of a Level II Trauma Center