5/16/2023 0 Comments Ohio trauma center levelsMore than 192,000 people lose their lives to trauma each year, and among them 32,675 deaths occurred in 2014 due to fatal motor-vehicle crashes (“Highway statistics, 2014”, 2015). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the leading causes of trauma are motor-vehicle accidents, falls, and assaults with a deadly weapon. However, a limitation of these estimates lies in that they were based on where people lived and not where people were injured. It should be noted that the trauma map used the 2010 TIEP inventory, not the updated data. Using the American Trauma Society (ATS) Trauma Information Exchange Program (TIEP) database, the University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Laboratory mapped trauma centers and estimated that 90.3% of the population lived within a 60-minute response time to a level I/II trauma center, and this coverage area represented 34.8% of the land area in the United States (The University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Laboratory, 2016). The access calculations also revealed that some country areas are without timely access to trauma centers, whereas for other areas, too many trauma centers may lead to inefficiencies and reduced quality of care. residents had access to a level I or II trauma center within 60 min using air and ground ambulance. According to their estimate, 84.1% of all U.S. (2005) performed the first national assessment of trauma center access, which considered the locations of trauma centers, ambulances, and residential populations. ![]() However, their geographic distribution may vary widely across states, resulting in an inequality of access to trauma care (Branas et al., 2005).īranas et al. The overall number of trauma centers in the United States has maintained a sustained growth over the last decade. Ideally, all individuals with severe, life-threatening injuries should be transported to level I or level II trauma centers, whereas all patients with less serious injuries should be transported to lower-level trauma centers or community emergency departments (Wang, Sasser, & Jurkovich, 2009). In North America, trauma centers are ranked by the American College of Surgeons (ACS), from level I (comprehensive service) to level III (limited-care). A trauma center can provide comprehensive emergency medical services to patients suffering traumatic injuries. Timely delivery of trauma care to severely injured patients is widely accepted as an effective strategy for reducing the mortality due to injury (Bonnie et al., 1999, Mann et al., 1999, Nathens et al., 2000, Nathens et al., 2000). Practical applications: These findings may help to identify the access to trauma centers for road crashes and the variation of delivery ratio to trauma center among the states, therefore a better utilization of trauma centers for road crashes can be achieved for the emergency medical services (EMS) systems. A linear regression analysis demonstrated that the longer the average route distance, the less the seriously injured patients in fatal crashes were taken to level I/II trauma center directly. The comparison between the estimated and actual transport time revealed that the different states adopted different trauma triage protocols, resulting in different utilization rates of the level I/II trauma center among states. Results and Conclusions: The Northeast region had the nearest average linear and route distance between fatal crash and trauma center (25.3 km and 31.7 km, respectively), followed by the Midwest (44.4 km and 54.1 km), the South (47.3 km and 57.0 km), and the West (50.9 km and 67.5 km). The estimated transport time to the nearest level I/II trauma center was also calculated and compared to the recorded on-scene and transport time. Two types of distance, linear distance and route distance, were calculated using ArcGIS. Method: In this study, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data between 20 were collected and analyzed to quantify the access of injured patients to trauma centers for fatal crashes across states. However, a limitation of these estimates lies in that they are based on where people live and not where people are injured, which may overestimate the access to trauma centers for seriously injured patients in fatal crashes. ![]() residents have access to at least one level I or II trauma center within 60 min. Introduction: Existing research indicates that around 90% of all U.S.
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