Trauma Registrar Course - Live

Trauma Register Course (TRC) Description

The original Trauma Register Course was first presented by the American Trauma Society in 1987 as a primer for professionals new to the area of trauma data collection. Since that time ATS’s Trauma Registrar Council took this entry-level course and built upon it to establish an advanced version in 1999.

While still providing an updated Basic course, the Advanced course provided a deeper look into the issues that affect a trauma registrar. It was designed to bridge the gaps and provides a more standardized understanding of the specialty and approach to the task of maintaining a trauma register for the seasoned registrar.

Ten years later, ATS combined these two courses in an effort to streamline education in a cost efficient manner for the trauma registrar. Lectures are designed to build upon experience, program maturity, and institutional needs. In this manner the TRC is designed and appropriate for trauma registrars / data managers of all levels of experience. The TRC provides the student with national standard definitions, and methodologies essential to a comprehensive trauma registry.

The TRC has been recognized by the American College of Surgeons in the Resources for Optimal Care of the Injured Patient since 1999 as an avenue for comprehensive trauma registry training.

The benefits of a nationally trained trauma registrar include a standardized approach for valid data collection for use in supporting the trauma programs efforts in research, performance improvement & patient safety, and injury prevention.

This benefits the hospital and trauma system by providing:

1. Valid reports to help drive an efficient and effective performance improvement program to better patient outcomes, reduce complications, and increase patient satisfaction.
   
2. Accurate reporting to regional, state, and national registries which allows for accurate benchmarking and ranking.
   
3. Knowledge and ability to identify unclear or nonspecific documentation that accounts for under coding and unclaimed reimbursement dollars.
   
4. Accurate injury severity scores and probability of survival

The TRC is written, produced, updated and presented through the volunteer efforts of members of the Trauma Registrars' Council of the American Trauma Society. These courses are brought to you by your colleagues, who like you are immersed in these tasks every day. The Trauma Registrars' Council has grown into the largest national active group for the trauma registrar professional. This council is active in developing and communicating standards and improvements in trauma data collection and reporting. These individuals also provide the countless hours and efforts to continually keep the ATS trauma registrar materials concurrent.

It is our hope that you will find a wealth of knowledge in this course that will enable you to assist your institution in its trauma registry program, making it the best that it can be. Additionally, we sincerely hope that this course, like other ATS efforts, will provide yet another means to achieve our goal of better education for trauma care and prevention.

Truama Register Course Learning Objectives

Upon completion of the Trauma Register Course the participant will be better able to:

1. Identify the fundamental elements of a trauma registry,
   
2. Identify the fundamental elements of the National Trauma Data Standard dataset patient inclusion criteria,
   
3. Achieve familiarity with the National Trauma Data Standards, their definitions, field values, and required associated elements,
   
4. Achieve familiarity with anatomical and medical terms frequently used in trauma, and understand their relevance to injury data collection,
   
5. Identify the basic principles for various scaling and scoring tools such as the ICD-9-CM, Trauma Score, Revised Trauma Score, Abbreviated Injury Scale, Injury Severity Score, TRISS, etc.,
   
6. Understand the assignment of injury severity values using the tools listed above, and their importance,
   
7. Identify the process of reviewing and abstracting medical records of seriously injured trauma victims,
   
8. State the assignment of e-codes and their significance,
   
9. Utilize ICD-9-CM coding of complex multiple trauma patients with solid organ injuries in practice,
   
10. Identify various methods of data presentation,
    
11. Identify the basic principles of Inter-Rater Reliability audits,
    
12. Identify areas related to DRGs to potentially increase financial reimbursement,
    
13. Describe the differences between coding for reimbursement versus injury severity,
    
14. Identify multidisciplinary members of a trauma quality and process improvement committee and discuss methodology for process and quality improvement,
    
15. Achieve familiarity with computer hardware and software commonly used in trauma registers,
    
16. Understand the significance of confidentiality concerning patient data and be able to develop safeguards to maintain these standards in the safe use of Trauma Register data and reports,
    
17. Verbalize the importance of complete and comprehensive documentation as it relates to injury severity and reimbursement,
    
18. Practice chart abstracting by reviewing actual medical records.
    

This complete training course has been approved for 17.9 continuing education hours from the Maryland Nurses Association, as well as 17.9 contact units for the non nursing participants. Additionally medical records coders can submit the course schedule, learning objectives and your certificate from ATS to AHIMA for credits.

Please register online from either the ATS Homepage (non-members) or log into the Members Section for course discount.