05/28/2025
Larry Strom, 71, was on his 25th ski day of the season just before Christmas when he took a wrong turn, launched off an unexpected drop, and hit a tree. All things considered, he felt fine. Ski Patrol insisted on an ambulance, and Larry chose Park City Hospital.
Tamara Moores Todd, MD, chief health informatics officer, was the attending physician in the emergency department that day.
“Honestly, he looked great,” she said. “His vital signs were totally normal and he was making jokes, saying, ‘I don’t want to be here, Doc,’. I relocated his shoulder right away. Normally that requires sedation, but he was so relaxed, I just popped it back in. He said he felt great.”
Dr. Moores Todd ran through the primary and secondary trauma exam, as is protocol, and could feel tenderness in his chest that worried her. She ordered a CT and had Larry in the scanner in less than five minutes.
That’s when things went sideways.
In the scanner, Larry’s blood pressure dropped. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. The images revealed a dire situation: Larry had a collapsed lung and a pseudo-aneurysm on his splenic artery, which, if it popped, could bleed out in minutes. Worst of all, his spleen was pulverized, torn off from the blood supply, and his splenic artery was pumping blood into his abdomen. His blood pressure dropped to life-threatening low levels.
Dr. Moores Todd called Mark Oraskovich, MD, the other ED attending physician on shift that day, to start the first priority: venting Larry’s chest. The entire ED team immediately started the Massive Transfusion Protocol (MTP) to transfuse Larry with life-saving blood replacement.
Dr. Moores Todd called Life Flight. Larry needed a Level I trauma center, but it wasn’t clear he would survive the 12-minute flight to Intermountain Medical Center. Covering all options, she called the Park City on-call surgeon.
“We had stopped for lunch,” said anesthesiologist Nate Kofford, MD. “This guy had about 10 miracles happen that day, and one of them was that we weren’t operating on someone else at that moment. Otherwise, he could have died.”
Another miracle: the on-call surgeon at Park City that day, Shane Lewis, MD, usually works at IMED’s Level I Trauma Center and was familiar with the system resources needed for this complex care.
Third miracle: Dr. Lewis wasn’t the only trauma surgeon in the Park City hospital. John Sutherland, MD, a surgeon at St. George Regional Hospital, happened to be visiting a family member that day. The two surgeons had connected earlier to discuss an unrelated case.
With Life Flight on the way, Larry was still bleeding uncontrollably into his abdomen, requiring continuous transfusion of blood. His condition was precarious.
The Park City surgery team made the call to hold off on the next case until Larry was on the helicopter to IMED. Just as he was getting loaded, his blood pressure dropped again. He needed surgery immediately.
There was no way he was going to survive the flight.
Throughout the hospital, technicians, nurses, supply personnel, administrators, and many more jumped into action. Matt Shirley, MD, an orthopedic surgeon who was between cases, scrubbed in as circulator for the surgery as well.
Dr. Lewis made calls on his way there: one to Dr. Sutherland and another to the hospital administrator. The paperwork would be key. He hoped to have Dr. Sutherland assist in the OR, but it was just as crucial for Dr. Sutherland to be properly credentialed to be there. Dr. Kofford knew he’d need help too. He sent out a group text to his partners.
Park City CEO Lori Weston was waiting outside the OR with Dr. Sutherland’s paperwork. She worked with medical staff president Austin Smith, MD, to complete the paperwork and drove in immediately to make sure it got signed. Dr. Sutherland signed it and scrubbed in.
The Life Flight team waited in the hall. More miracles: They brought several units of blood with them. The surgery team needed them all. Larry had five liters of blood in his stomach and needed all the blood available.
“I clamped the artery, stopping the blood loss,” said Dr. Lewis. “And when I looked up, there were four anesthesiologists in the room. That was incredible.”
The team cleared the rest of Larry’s shattered spleen from his abdomen and ligated the hemorrhaging arteries. Larry was stable, but he wasn’t out of the woods.
At a Trauma I center, there’s a vacuum device used to seal up a patient’s surgical incision without stitches when the team will need to open it up again. They didn’t have that at Park City. Dr. Lewis improvised one using part of the surgical drape and a couple of chest tubes.
“We call that a combat vac,” he said.
Within 40 minutes, Larry was ready for the flight.
“This case shows we really are better together,” said Dr. Moores Todd. “When we needed help, people showed up. But we’re also an integrated health network. We all worked together, and this patient received care equivalent to a Level I trauma center that day.”
“My role was just paperwork,” said Lori. “Paperwork normally holds up a process, but in this case it was a critical piece that allowed a life to be saved. As I left the hospital that evening, I remember thinking that no one but our team knows the resources and love it took to save that patient’s life.”
And Larry? He was discharged from IMED a week later. Six weeks after that, the team called to check on him. He answered the phone out of breath.
“He’d been riding hard on his stationary bike,” said Dr. Moores Todd.
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