During the 1998 Mississippi Legislative Session, House Bill
966 created the Trauma Care Trust Fund to assist in the
development of Mississippi’s Inclusive Trauma Care System.
Specifically, the law required that an additional $5 be assessed
on all moving traffic violations, deposited into the State
Treasury as the Trauma Care Trust Fund, appropriated annually to
and administered by the Mississippi State Department of Health
for:
- State and regional trauma system administration;
- State trauma-specific public information and education;
and
- Hospital and physician uncompensated care funding to
Mississippi State Department of Health designated trauma care
centers.
During the 1999 Mississippi Legislative Session an additional
$6 million dollars was appropriated to the Trauma Care Trust
Fund, to give a total of about $8 million per year to the
Mississippi Trauma Care System. Legislators authorized annual
funding through the Trauma Care Trust Fund for regional support
and uncompensated trauma care as defined by the state trauma
registry through regional contracts with the Department of
Health.
In 1998, representatives of the Mississippi Trauma Advisory
Committee (MTAC) and the Division of Emergency Medical Services
worked to create a formula to allocate available monies from the
Mississippi Trauma Care Trust Fund (“Fund”). This
would reimburse eligible hospitals and physicians for treating
uncompensated trauma cases through trauma centers designated by
DEMS. Only treatment of patients qualified for entry in the
trauma center’s trauma registry that also met the
definition of “uncompensated” could be submitted for
reimbursement from the Fund.
Physicians that qualify for reimbursement of uncompensated
care currently includes:
- General/Trauma Surgeons
- Orthopedic Surgeons
- Neurosurgeons
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