Trying to fill the void left by Atlanta Medical Center
The closure of Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center last fall left the metro Atlanta area with just one Level One trauma center. That’s Grady Memorial Hospital’s Marcus Trauma Center. But, it won’t be easy finding another hospital to fill trauma coverage void.
ATLANTA – When a 24-year-old opened fire inside a Midtown Atlanta medical practice in early May, shooting five women, and sending the area into lockdown, the four survivors were rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital’s Marcus Trauma Center.
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That is where Dr. Elizabeth Benjamin, the trauma medical director for Grady Health System, says the team is able to mobilize quickly.
“You have specialty surgeons, immediate OR capability, trauma surgeons in-house,” Dr. Benjamin says. “You can go to the operating room in 5 minutes. I mean, we can go straight from the helipad to the operating room.”
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And with the abrupt closure of Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center last November, the city’s only other Level 1 trauma center, Grady is now Atlanta’s only top tier critical care provider.
But with the world’s busiest airport, and events that draw tens of thousands of music fans downtown, Georgia state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, an orthopedic surgeon for 30 years, worries Atlanta is vulnerable.
“I don’t think you can ever be fully prepared for a mass casualty event, but when you take away a Level 1 trauma center, certainly we’re in worse shape for a mass casualty event than we were before,” Kirkpatrick says.
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Georgia has 34 trauma centers, five of them Level 1 trauma centers.
Northeast Georgia Medical Center, the closest Level 1 trauma center, is 53 miles away in Gainesville.
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And Kirkpatrick, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, worries a major disaster may be more than one hospital can handle.
“Taylor Swift was a great example,” Kirkpartrick says, “Something goes wrong at one of those events or some kind of disaster, whether you’re a Level 1 trauma center or not, Grady is quickly going to become overwhelmed because they operate at high capacity all the time. So, the patients are just going to go anywhere in the metro that the EMT can take them.”
Other major US cities have at least two Level 1 trauma centers.
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Miami and Houston have two Level 1 trauma center, Detroit, Houston and Washington, DC have three and Philadelphia and Dallas-Fort Worth have four top-tier trauma centers.
And time is critical in trauma care.
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Survivors can deteriorate quickly, so their best chance of survival is to get to a critical care facility within 60 minutes.
Dr. Benjamin says AMC’s shut down has impacted Marcus Trauma Center, where they had about 9,000 trauma call “activations” in 2021.
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“Our numbers are definitely up across the board after the closure of AMC,” she says.
But, Dr. Benjamin says, Grady is expanding its ICU capacity and adding additional trauma beds to up with the jump in trauma patients.
“Obviously, we would have loved to have had a little bit more advanced warning, but even with that, we were able to absorb the trauma increases quite easily,” she says.
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Benjamin says getting to Level 1 status is a major undertaking for a hospital that can take several years.
“So, one of the things that’s really important, I think, to understand is when you have a Level 1 trauma center, what goes along with that is a huge amount of resources,” she explains.
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Hospitals must have general surgeons in house 24/7, and a network of specialized surgeons, anesthesiologists, emergency physicians and critical care providers on call.
They also must be a teaching hospital.
In January, Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, which has been heavily impacted by the Wellstar AMC closure, became a Level 3 trauma center, and Kirkpatrick says Piedmont Healthcare plans to invest in boosting critical care at the facility.
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“I think their goal is to get to a Level 2, which would cover more of the south side of town,” Kirkpatric says. “So, I think the gaps, everybody’s looking at it, everybody’s working on it. I don’t think the hospitals are ignoring it, but it’s pretty hard to replace a Level 1 trauma center.”
Kirkpatrick says hospitals to work on their trauma readiness to make sure they are prepared for when the next disaster hits.
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“They will (need to be) prepared for people that are almost certainly going to show up there. Whether they’re ready or not,” she says.
It is a gloomy morning in Atlanta, but for Brad Guzan, it feels like a warm, sunny day. The veteran Atlanta United goalkeeper could have been planning his offseason, gone fishin’ for a few weeks while he waited for news of what the team will look like in 2025. Instead, he’s in his normal routine. He’s working. He’s preparing for a match. And he’s happy.
“It feels that much better when you’re training with a real purpose, hopefully for MLS Cup,” Guzan said to ESPN.
His stops on Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and the rest of Inter Miami’s superstar squad earned him the right to keep working. Atlanta won the second two matches of a three-game series in Round One of the MLS Cup playoffs.
Even in the first game, the 40-year-old Guzan looked like a goalkeeper in top form. He made eight saves in the defeat, then one in the home victory and nine in the critical clincher, a 3-2 win at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale that vanquished one of the best MLS teams of all time and sent Atlanta into the next round.
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Guzan and Atlanta United now are preparing for the Eastern Conference semifinal against Orlando City, three steps away from lifting MLS Cup.
“We’re probably not as shocked as people on the outside that we’re in this position,” Guzan said.
Not as shocked, but maybe still a bit surprised. After all, Inter Miami didn’t just have a lot of stars. The team put together the best-ever MLS regular season, earning 74 points to set a record for most points in a campaign.
And Atlanta United didn’t just have a rocky season. They fired manager Gonzalo Pineda after winning just four of their first 16 matches. They fired technical director Carlos Bocanegra after the summer transfer window. Even before Bocanegra’s departure, the team had started to strip the roster for parts, preparing for a winter overhaul with a new general manager and a new coach giving their input about the right players to bring to the club.
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Standout attacking midfielder Thiago Almada left for Botafogo for what the club said was a league-record fee. Consistent forward Giorgos Giakoumakis joined Liga MX side Cruz Azul. Atlanta also let go of homegrown product Caleb Wiley, who moved to Chelsea.
The Five Stripes received $42 million in combined transfer fees for the trio. The soccer-valuation site Transfermarkt assesses what’s left of Atlanta United’s squad at little more than $36 million.
The team wasn’t left entirely to fend for itself. Russian forward Aleksei Miranchuk arrived from Serie A and was an important part of Atlanta’s three playoff wins so far. They also added left back Pedro Amador, who has impressed and registered four assists in the playoffs.
Incoming players must beat out the existing players, though, something Guzan knows well. After an inconsistent 2023, the team signed Josh Cohen, a goalkeeper with UEFA Champions League experience after several seasons starting at Maccabi Haifa. Yet, Guzan kept the No. 1 job despite competition from the younger player.
“I’ve always said I don’t need an external motivator for me to go into work and train and ultimately go into games,” Guzan said. “I’m my biggest critic. I fully expect a club of Atlanta United’s level to bring in players to challenge at all positions — not just goalkeeper — and I’m not naive to think I’m going to play forever. But I do think I’m able to offer something to the group that is beneficial.
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“Obviously, last year wasn’t ideal from an individual standpoint, so it was a moment I wanted to try and rectify.”
Guzan should be able to consider it forgiven by Atlanta’s passionate fan base, one that has come to expect success since the team won MLS Cup in 2018, its second season in existence.
Since then, expectant fans have largely been disappointed. Atlanta returned to the Eastern Conference final in 2019 but hadn’t won a playoff series until their upset of Miami this month.
This year didn’t look like it would be the year that changed that, but the team started gathering momentum late in the year under interim manager Rob Valentino. They lost just once in their last six and secured victories over the New York Red Bulls and Orlando City in the last two weeks of the season to reach the postseason. Once there, they fought CF Montreal to a 2-2 draw with Guzan making a save in the penalty shootout to set up the first-round showdown with Inter Miami.
A May win in Fort Lauderdale, plus a September draw with the Herons in Atlanta helped boost belief that the Five Stripes could hang with the top seed.
“They had a great season, they set the point record and obviously have big-name players, but we went into it with confidence,” Guzan said.
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Some of that confidence came from Guzan. A goalkeeper who has been in big moments for the U.S. national team and with Aston Villa in the Premier League, it was evident early on in the series that Guzan wasn’t going to go quietly in the series. From the saves he made to the viral moment in which he ended up stuck in the net after a shove while Miami tried to chase the match, Guzan set the tone for the rest of the Atlanta team.
“I think he has an intense focus, almost a look in his eyes that ‘this is go time,’” Valentino told ESPN. “When the team can see something like that, I think it’s infectious.
“He makes a save, and he’s got some aura about him almost. It bleeds through the team. His voice alone is something the team feeds off of, and he’s been huge in this run of games.”
As the lowest seed left in the playoffs, Atlanta United now go on the road again to face Orlando City. The team will need to look to Guzan’s example — plus get performances from field players like the ones they got against Miami — if the journey will continue. Yet, there once again is internal belief that they can secure an upset.
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“Ultimately, what I’ve been telling the group is that it doesn’t matter what anybody said on the outside — good or bad,” Valentino said. “It wasn’t me fostering [confidence], it was us fostering it together and having internal belief in ourselves and what we can do on the field. The way we operate on a day-to-day basis? People can’t see that.”
While very few people expected Atlanta to get to that point, and even some on the inside had to be doubting their chances, the team feels they now have a clear goal — one that they are three wins away from securing.
“It has to be MLS Cup,” Guzan said. “It’s about trophies. It’s about winning, especially at this point in the season.”
It’s a goal that would keep him working well into December, keep the cold winter feeling plenty pleasant and would continue to shock just about everyone, maybe even Atlanta United themselves.
A new report on national and metro-specific rental prices showed that the costs to rent a one or two-bedroom apartment across the United States remains in flux.
However, while national rent prices on one-bedroom apartments was mostly unchanged, two-bedroom prices had started to drop. In Atlanta, the report from Zumper said prices for the metro had fallen 8.1% since this time last year.
In October, one-bedroom apartments in Atlanta had a median price of $1,600, while two-bedrooms had a median cost of $2,030.
Zumper said that makes Atlanta the 27th most expensive rental market in the country, on a ranking of the top 100 most expensive markets. Month-over-month, Zumper said rent prices in Atlanta for a one-bedroom apartment were unchanged, but had fallen by 6.4% compared to last year.
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When it comes to two-bedroom apartments, costs fell 2.3% in the past month and 8.1% compared to the year before.
Among state-level rents, Georgia was 2.8% higher than the national median, according to Zumper’s report and middle-of-the-pack for the seven swing states closely watched during the 2024 general election.
“Our rental data shows that 4 of the 7 key swing states, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all experienced annual rent price growth rates that were larger than the national median of 2.3%,” Zumper said.
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Atlanta and Augusta were the only two cities in Georgia from Zumper’s top 100. Rental prices in Augusta were up across the board, as much as 28% for a two-bedroom apartment.
Atlanta United FC (10-14-10, ninth in the Eastern Conference during the regular season) vs. Orlando City SC (15-12-7, fourth in the Conference during the regular season)
Orlando, Florida; Sunday, 3:30 p.m. EST
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BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE: Orlando City SC -152, Atlanta United FC +368; over/under is 2.5 goals
BOTTOM LINE: Jamal Thiare leads Atlanta United into a matchup with Orlando City after scoring two goals against Inter Miami.
Orlando is 12-10-7 against Eastern Conference opponents. Orlando is 10-1-0 when it scores three or more goals.
United is 13-10-7 against Eastern Conference opponents. United is seventh in the Eastern Conference with 167 shots on goal, averaging 4.9 per game.
The teams meet Sunday for the third time this season. United won the last meeting 2-1.
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TOP PERFORMERS: Facundo Torres has 16 goals and four assists for Orlando. Ramiro Enrique has four goals and two assists over the last 10 games.
Saba Lobzhanidze has 10 goals and four assists for United. Thiare has three goals over the past 10 games.
LAST 10 GAMES: Orlando: 6-2-2, averaging 2.0 goals, 5.2 shots on goal and 5.1 corner kicks per game while allowing 1.0 goal per game.
United: 4-2-4, averaging 1.8 goals, 4.1 shots on goal and 4.9 corner kicks per game while allowing 1.6 goals per game.
NOT EXPECTED TO PLAY: Orlando: Mason Stajduhar (injured).
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United: Edwin Mosquera (injured), Brooks Lennon (injured), Quentin Westberg (injured).
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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
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