INDIANAPOLIS | Kwana Shaw has recovered from the bullet that tore through her abdomen, striking her intestines, kidney and spine. But her 13-month-old son, Josiah, didn't survive the apparent carjacking last January in Gary.

On Wednesday, the Schererville woman joined the push to bring a trauma center hospital to Northwest Indiana, telling a legislative panel in Indianapolis that such a facility might have made a difference for her young son.

"(The doctors) said if they had a trauma center here, it most likely would have had a pediatric surgeon, and he may have survived," Shaw said. "But he had to be flown out, and he didn't survive."

Josiah Shaw, who suffered gunshot wounds to his chin and pelvis, was one of the 221 critically injured patients admitted so far this year to Methodist Hospitals campuses in Gary and Merrillville. Fifteen of those patients had to be transported to hospitals in the Chicago area because Northwest Indiana lacks a trauma center equipped to treat the most life-threatening injuries, officials said.

"Other (region) hospitals have to get involved," said Mike McGee, chief of emergency medicine for Methodist Hospitals. "We're not the only ones transferring patients."

The General Assembly's Health Finance Commission, led by state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, took testimony Wednesday from officials representing six of the state's seven trauma centers. Dr. Mary Aaland, trauma medical director at Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, said Indiana needs to develop a statewide plan for trauma care.

"If you're (an urban) center such as Gary, Indiana, they have a real problem," she said.

More than half of the 224 trauma victims Methodist Hospitals admitted last year were stabbing or gunshot victims, the facility reports. Twenty-four of those patients had to be transferred to trauma centers in the Chicago area.

Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis reported similar statistics, while blunt trauma victims injured in falls or traffic accidents represent the overwhelming majority of trauma patients treated by other Indiana trauma centers -- in Evansville, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis and South Bend.

The hospital leaders told the legislative panel Wednesday that the chances of surviving a serious stabbing, gunshot wound or car crash drop precipitously after the first hour following the injury. Trauma centers are staffed at all hours with surgeons and specialists equipped to treat the most critical patients.