MOSES LAKE — Samaritan Hospital has been upgraded to a Level 3 trauma center. The Washington Department of Health notified hospital officials of the new designation Friday, and it went into effect immediately.

Previously the hospital had been designated a Level 4. The designations refer to the kind of trauma cases a hospital can treat. The higher the trauma-level designation, the more complicated the cases the hospital can treat.

The trauma designation is good for three years, and is reevaluated every three years.

Samaritan is the second hospital in central Washington to be designated as a Level 3 trauma center. The other is Confluence Health-Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee.

Samaritan is the second-largest hospital in the region, which made it a good candidate to upgrade its trauma response, said Shelley Gay, the hospital’s trauma care director. The hospital’s close proximity to I-90, recreation sites like the Sand Dunes, agriculture and manufacturing mean the hospital can see a lot of trauma patients, she said.

Samaritan officials applied for the upgrade in December. The process required a site visit from WDOH officials and reworking the trauma department. A separate, $850,000 project completely remodeled the emergency room.

To earn the Level 3 trauma designation, Samaritan officials were required to have board-certified general and orthopedic surgical coverage 24 hours per day, 24-hour access to advanced diagnostic imaging equipment, and a full-scale trauma team. That includes a certified trauma surgeon and certified trauma nurses.

Along with those changes, hospital officials upgraded the trauma treatment policies and its emergency room and trauma personnel are required to meet specific training standards, Gay said. The hospital also implemented a “robust quality improvement program.”

The hospital also is required to provide community education on the leading causes of traumatic injury in the hospital’s service area. For Samaritan those are car accidents, fall and blunt trauma, Gay explained. (Blunt trauma is “an injury you don’t see,” Gay said, citing the example of internal injury sustained in a fall.)

The remodeling in the emergency room reflected a change in the way patients are treated. Prior to the remodeling some of the rooms were set up to treat specific illnesses. The remodeling moved all the medical equipment to carts, meaning any room can be used to treat any patient. One room is designated for trauma cases, but the equipment could be moved to other rooms if necessary.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].