ATS is invested in the continuing development of well-organized trauma care asset inventory that can assist in the day-to-day response to routine emergencies as well as mass casualty incidents that may overwhelm the infrastructure of any one community alone. TIEP’s trauma center inventory and leadership exchange effort have been a strong beginning and should be maintained. However, more can and should be done in partnership with our federal, state, and private partners to work toward a coherent, integrated trauma distribution system.
To that end, ATS proposes the following areas of continued program development. Importantly, ATS will continue to invite and respond to new ideas and direction from its strategic partners.
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Supporting research and policy development in the regionalization of emergency care:
- TIEP provides a working knowledge of the location and capacities of trauma centers across the country.
- ATS has retooled the database to add information on hospitals that specialize in the care of stroke, burn, STEMI, and other conditions requiring immediate treatment.
- ATS will add information on the EMS systems that feed various hospitals and trauma centers, allowing a wealth of new mathematical modeling that would show the effects of EMS patient flow in disasters, if certain trauma centers and hospitals were closed or on diversion, etc.
- ATS will survey for trauma centers and hospitals that are telemedicine hubs and the hospital “spokes” they serve.
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Improving overall access to trauma care: It is estimated that a third of trauma patients are not transported to trauma centers, seriously impacting their chances for survival or recovery. ATS believes that an accessible, up-to-date, map-based trauma center and emergency care inventory can contribute to correcting this by identifying existing resources and pointing out where resources need to be developed. This inventory must be constantly updated as institutional capacities and the people within these institutions change, and additional data fields must be added to meet the needs of federal, state, and local partners.
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Improving disaster response, thereby improving national preparedness. Trauma Centers are critical to caring for victims of terrorism and other disasters. Appropriate distribution of patients from a mass casualty site remains one of the major roadblocks to effective mass casualty medical response. ATS is keenly interested in investigating how to improve communication between trauma centers and the field in areas impacted by mass casualty incidents. Trauma center maps linked with updated contact information and solid real-time communication will help the transportation triage process in directing patients to the appropriate trauma center for their particular needs.
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Automating the distribution of emergency information to trauma centers and hospitals. CDC, through its Terrorist Injuries: Information, Dissemination, and Exchange Project (TIIDE), recently developed 17 two-page fact sheets on the treatment of various injuries caused by explosions, fires, or building collapse. These fact sheets, for which ATS served as lead TIIDE agency, have been faxed and emailed to hospitals and trauma centers across the U.S. and the world as “just-in-time” learning tools for emergency medical providers. Other material for biologic, chemical, and nuclear events could also be distributed on an emergent basis. By identifying the hospitals in disaster-affected areas by zip code or city (or internationally, if so desired), ATS could utilize its trauma center database to automatically generate emergency calls and send treatment information to the emergency departments of these affected hospitals.
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Improving access to trauma care in rural America. The development of better ways to bring better care to trauma patients in rural areas is a crucial need. NHTSA is now overlaying automobile crash data onto ATS’s trauma center maps to show what areas of the country are not served by a local trauma center, information that can be used enhancing access to life flight services and, eventually, to development of new trauma centers as well as adjunctive telemedicine assistance.