by Jolene Toves

Guam - There's a new doctor in town who has big plans for the Guam Memorial Hospital.

Guam's only public ihospital has hired a new doctor who has been on board for six weeks now. Dr. Hillary Chollet is currently heading up GMH's Wound Care Center and is a general surgeon who has opened wound care centers and trauma centers across the mainland. "Studies in the us show that an organized trauma system will save an additional 25-30% of life and so as near as I can tell here on Guam I think you have a thousand traumas per year," he projected.

He says while that is a small number, for a person who has trauma or a family member with experiencing trauma it is a big deal and a life changer. He adds that in trauma more money is lost than from cancer or heart disease put together because in large part it hits our young people often times disabling them and preventing them from working. "The goal is to take good care of the patient and get them back to work that is our goal so we treat pain but we don't coddle pain we try and get them off pain medication as soon as possible we try to get them to rehab," he added.

Working with the hospital's administrator Jospeh Verga they are hoping to obtain designation for a trauma center at GMH, a first for Guam. "To set up a trauma center is a big deal my parent organization is the American College of Surgeons and my three trauma center that I have set up were all Level II Trauma Centers," he said.

The first step is to establish a chapter of the American College of Surgeons on island in January, adding, "And once we have our chapter of ACS then I can make a committee on trauma on Guam and then once we develop further infrastructure we will slowly be developing the rules."

He anticipates that by September 2015 the American College of Surgeons will come out and conduct a consultation to determine what needs to be improve based on the rules. "One thing we will be doing is developing a registry trauma registry where we will be tracking all our trauma patients and the financial aspect of their care so we can make sure we get paid," he said.

According to Verga he plans to officially submit a resolution to formerly endorse moving forward with the initiative to the GMH board.