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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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