ATLANTA -- Lawmakers on Monday gave Grady Memorial Hospital the biggest piece of a $58.9 million pie to fund statewide trauma care.

State Sen. Vincent Fort said $59 million for the whole state is not enough. “The idea that 700 people die each year because we don’t have a strong, viable health care network trauma care is not acceptable under any circumstances,” he said.

Grady will get $12.7 million, about half of what hospital administrators were hoping for.

“It’ll really help us jump start the rest of our system, because then we can go back and look at all of our needs from our trauma care perspective and other costs that’ll help us take care of our patients,” said chief of medicine, Dr.Leon Haley Jr.

The hospital was among 15 competing for funds from the Legislature. The money was parceled out by the Georgia Trauma Care Network Commission.

“Every effort was taken to make sure that each hospital was fairly represented based on the amount of work that they do,” said Dr. Dennis Ashley, the Trauma Task Force chairman.

The Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah got the next-largest amount, $5.66 million, followed by the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta with $5.07 million and the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon with $3.5 million.