Fatality measures of road trauma are insufficiently sensitive to guide policy in a small jurisdiction. This study describes the findings of road trauma data matching and amalgamation in the ACT for calendar years 2002 and 2003. Both automated name matching and manual searching were used to match police crash data with Emergency Department presentations to the only hospital with a major trauma service. Deaths and hospital presentations were classified by outcome and duration of hospital admission. Of 23207 crashes on the Police database, 1079 were identified as leading to one or more deaths or hospital presentations. A further 986 incidents, at least 373 of them on public roads, were identified from hospital records, leading to a total of 2531 hospital episodes, including 24 deaths and 151 admissions of more than 7 days duration, and a total of 5540 hospital bed-days used. There are significant limitations to road trauma data routinely collected by both by law enforcement and health personnel, reflecting operational constraints. This methodology provides significantly higher quality data than previous approaches and successfully quantifies the burden of road trauma. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E215375.
Abstract