FAIRFIELD — Solano County over the past year added two trauma centers, which means many accident and violence victims no longer have to travel in helicopter to a distant medical center.
NorthBay Healthcare established the first county trauma center in September 2011 at its NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield. Kaiser Permanente quickly followed by establishing a trauma center in October 2011 at its Vacaville hospital.
Both established Level III centers, which can take victims up to a certain level of injury. Both hospitals have expressed a desire to go still further and establish a Level II center, which could also take victims with head traumas and neurological problems.
Still another local hospital care advancement took place last year. NorthBay Medical Center in November 2011 was designated as a STEMI receiving center, allowing it to receive people having a severe cardiac event. Before, these patients got taken to centers in San Pablo, Sacramento and Antioch.
“Having a center here in the county is going to provide a great resource for our citizens,” county Emergency Medical Services Administrator Ted Selby said prior to the center’s opening.
All of this is in addition to the hospital resources the county already has. Solano County is served by NorthBay HealthCare, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health and David Grant Medical Center, as well as by Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa.
Medical care in Solano County has come a long way since the area ‘s first hospital opened in 1876 in the Tolenas area in a two-story, wooden building with barns, a water tower and windmill nearby.
NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield has its origins in the late 1950s, when local doctors worked to establish the 32-bed Intercommunity Memorial Hospital. Fairfield was previously served by the 12-bed Bunny Hospital, which had become inadequate for a community enjoying a post-World War II growth boom.
Intercommunity Memorial Hospital became NorthBay Medical Center with a 132-bed facility on B. Gale Wilson Boulevard. The NorthBay website says the center delivers more than 1,500 babies a year and has the most sophisticated service for premature or ill newborns within 50 miles. The center also boasts that its Radiation Oncology Department has technology as modern as that found at Stanford and other university medical centers.
In 1987, NorthBay opened a 50-bed VacaValley Hospital that since 2007 has included a $13 million emergency department and outpatient surgery center.
Kaiser Permanente has hospitals in Vacaville and Vallejo and medical offices in Fairfield and Vacaville.
Sutter Solano Medical Center has its roots in the Vallejo General Hospital, built in 1921. The hospital moved to its present location with 102 beds in 1969 and became affiliated with Sutter Health in 1984. Sutter also operates the Sutter Cancer Center in Vallejo. Sutter Regional Medical Foundation offices serve Fairfield, Vallejo, Vacaville and Rio Vista.
David Grant Medical Center opened in 1943 at Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base Hospital, which today is called Travis Air Force Base. The center in 1988 opened a $193 million facility that has 350 inpatient and 75 aeromedical staging flight beds. A multimillion-dollar modernization effort is currently taking place.
The Travis Air Force Base website calls the hospital “the Air Force Medical Service’s flagship medical treatment facility in the United States.”
Reach Barry Eberling at 427-6929, or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/beberlingdr.
