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LITTLE ROCK—Gov. Mike Beebe offered $200,000 Thursday to help lay the groundwork for a trauma system in Arkansas, a project he acknowledges will cost millions more before becoming available statewide.

Officials say the money will go toward building a database noting when hospitals have specialists like neurosurgeons on-call for car crashes, electrocutions and other serious injuries. The state also will bring in consultants to suggest how to build a trauma system in Arkansas, one of only a few states without such a unified hospital network.

“This is really a first starting point of what is necessary in order to be able to have the kind of information, the kind of coordination, the kind of communication that ultimately a trauma system will have to have as a baseline,” Beebe told reporters during a news conference Thursday.

The funding will go toward building a “dashboard” database for firefighters, police officers and ambulance personnel to know what hospitals to direct their patients, said Paul Halverson, director of the Arkansas Department of Health. Now, patients often are taken to the nearest hospital, without regard of whether its emergency room can handle that severe injury.

“It’s about trying to take a tally on a daily basis to understand where the resources are at at any one time in the state,” Halverson said. “It’s the beginning process, I think really, of developing a coordinated trauma system in the state. ... This is about creating a predictable system.”

Now, many of the state’s severely injured patients head to The Med in Memphis, Tenn., or other out-of-state hospitals, as state hospitals don’t have the specialists. Fully funding a trauma system, estimated last year to cost $25 million, would pay for state hospitals to have those professionals on hand for emergencies.

Halverson said it was “impossible to predict in finite terms” when a fully functional system would be available to Arkansans. He said a lot would depend on how the state Legislature grapples with the issue next year.

Last year, the House favored increasing some court fees, while the Senate supported adding a fee to auto insurance premiums. Thursday, Beebe said he was aware of no consensus on how to fund the system. The governor said he’d leave the funding discussion to the Legislature, saying costs would depend on how robust of a system lawmakers want.

Funding the trauma system likely would send money to out-of-state hospitals that provide care to Arkansans. The Med has threatened to cut off care for patients from Arkansas and Mississippi in the past, saying it provides $23 million annually in uncompensated care to residents of those states.

Beebe said the state has met with Memphis’ mayor and hospital officials about increasing state funding to The Med.

“We’re still in discussions,” the governor said. “We do provide them some funding, they always want more funding. It’s a question of revenues.”

The $200,000 came from the governor’s emergency fund and represented close to half of his yearly $500,000 allotment. Other donations by the governor’s fund—including money for the cities of Blevins and Haynes, Just Communities of Central Arkansas, the Johnson County Hospital, the Arkansas Press Association, the Franklin & Crawford County Bridge and the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute —ranged in value from $1,500 to $30,000.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, state records show the governor returned more than $185,000 of unused money to the state treasury.