Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital is an Adult Level I Trauma Center, located in North Central Pennsylvania. As a rural tertiary care teaching hospital serving the northern tier of Pennsylvania and the southern tier of New York, GRPH provides acute care surgery services which include trauma, emergency general surgery and surgical critical care. GRPH is a part of the Guthrie Health System. The primary focus of the Adult Level I Trauma Center is to provide prompt, quality care to the predominantly rural regions of north central Pennsylvania and South-Central New York.
The need for an accredited trauma center in this region is clearly demonstrated by the rural nature of the region and associated lifestyle (winding country roads, farming, hunting and off-road recreation), prevalence of blunt trauma in the region (falls, high-speed MVCs, motorcycles and ATVs), increase in elderly population presenting with falls, MVCs and associated traumatic injuries, the significant distances to other accredited or verified trauma centers and, additionally, the growth of the natural gas industry has increased the need for rural surgical services.
The Regional Trauma Center is an essential element of the surgical residency program. All surgical residents receive ATLS training during their first year of the program and, unlike most surgical residency programs, rotate regularly on the trauma and acute care surgery service and respond to trauma activations even while on-call for other services.