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"The cheapest insurance you can have" says head of UMD Shock Trauma

Doctors from the R Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center at the University of Maryland retrieve patients from helicopter. Photo: R Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center
Doctors from the R Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center at the University of Maryland retrieve patients from helicopter. Photo: R Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center

If you’re banged up in a car crash somewhere in the Free State or if you’re shot on the street, chances are you’ll be transported quickly -- maybe by helicopter -- to the R Adams Cowley Shock-Trauma Center at the University of Maryland. The sixty-five hundred badly injured patients admitted there each year get the highest level of trauma care in the U.S. But even though it’s the heart of Maryland’s exceptional Emergency Medical Services, the Shock-Trauma center has struggled for money.

That changed this week. We talk with Shock-Trauma’s top doctor, Dr. Thomas Scalea, about how the center's funding situation has improved dramatically.

Sheilah Kast is the host of On The Record, Monday-Friday, 9:30-10:00 am.
Maureen Harvie is Senior Supervising Producer for On the Record. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and joined WYPR in 2014 as an intern for the newsroom. Whether coordinating live election night coverage, capturing the sounds of a roller derby scrimmage, interviewing veterans, or booking local authors, she is always on the lookout for the next story.