When Dr. Gary Vercruysse came to Tucson from Atlanta in 2012, there was no local inpatient burn program here, and patients routinely went to Phoenix for treatment.
Under Vercruysseβs direction, the number of Southern Arizonans getting burn treatment in Phoenix dropped from about 200 people per year to fewer than 10, said Dr. Terence OβKeeffe, interim trauma director at Banner-University Medical Center Tucson, which has Southern Arizonaβs sole Level One trauma center for the most serious, life-threatening cases.
Now, five years after he got here, Vercruysse is leaving. He has accepted a job as head of emergency general surgery at the University of Michigan and will transition into the job of director of the burn center at its medical center.
βIt was a good opportunity for me to grow as a researcher and to continue to grow as a clinician and to head up a well-endowed, well-staffed burn center with a long history of providing excellent care,β Vercruysse said.
OβKeeffe says Southern Arizonans should not worry about losing local burn care, including for severe cases. The UA, in partnership with Banner Health, is recruiting to hire a burn surgeon to replace Vercruysse, though that process could take several months, OβKeeffe said.
Banner-University Medical Center Tucson will also continue with Vercruysseβs plans to establish a burn center thatβs verified by the American Burn Association and the American College of Surgeons, OβKeeffe said.
Currently, 66 verified burn centers exist in the U.S., including the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center, which is the only verified center in the state.
Recruited by Rhee
The Tucson burn program has grown every year for the past five years. The program now regularly admits 250 inpatients per year as well as about 200 patients in the emergency department, and handles more than 1,000 outpatient clinic visits annually β both adults and children β for burns and complex wound care.
The burns they see range from people injured in kitchen accidents and car crashes to firefighters and people with chemical burns. The care includes skin grafting and plastic surgery for scar repair.
Initially, the fledgling program under Vercruysse accepted patients with burns covering 40 percent of their body surface or less, but gradually increased its ability to handle the most severe burns.
βItβs very rare now that we would send someone to Phoenix,β Vercruysse said.
Vercruysseβs burn program added a second surgeon in November 2016 β Dr. Arpana Jain, who came to Tucson following a burn surgery fellowship at University of California-Davis and the Shrinerβs Hospital for Children in Sacramento. She specializes in reconstruction surgery for burn scars and pediatric burn care.
βWe cannot be all that we want to be with just one burn surgeon,β OβKeeffe said.
Until a second burn surgeon is hired, there may be occasions when people with severe injuries go to Phoenix, though OβKeeffe anticipates few such cases.
Vercruysse came to Tucson from Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where he was co-director of a regional burn center. He was recruited by former top trauma surgeon Dr. Peter Rhee, who came to Tucson in 2007 and revived a flailing trauma program at the local academic medical center.
Rhee left Tucson last year for a job as medical director at Grady Memorial Hospitalβs trauma center.
Under Rhee and Vercruysse, the then-UA Medical Center became the first inpatient burn program in Southern Arizona since Carondelet St. Maryβs closed its unit in 2008. The St. Maryβs program operated for 40 years as both an outpatient and inpatient program.
βHe has put in a Herculean effort to build a program here,β OβKeeffe said of Vercruysse. βHe has set us well on the path of becoming a verified burn center. We could not have done it without him. He came in on nights, weekends. Heβd come in when he wasnβt on call. He has put his heart and soul into this.β
New burn center
OβKeeffe said Banner-University will have 12 beds dedicated to burn patients in a new hospital tower that is under construction next to the existing facility and set to open in 2019.
A dedicated burn unit in the new hospital will allow patients to stay in the same location from admission to discharge, which will provide better continuity of care than they have in the current facility, he said.
At that point, officials will consider becoming a verified burn center, though OβKeeffe anticipates the process will require philanthropic support in order to become reality.
While Banner is providing the physical space, psychosocial support for burn programs often requires a foundation or other charitable support.
βThe next logical step is to become a verified burn center,β Vercruysse concurred. βWe need not only the physical infrastructure, but ancillary support services.β
Those ancillary services include psychologists and psychiatrists available to the burn center on an as-needed basis, social-service consultation and child-life services for pediatric burn patients.
