CRASH-Hospital Integration (CODES)

This project has two primary aims. First we will link (integrate) the Kentucky CRASH, hospital inpatient and hospital outpatient (including emergency department) databases for 2014. KIPRC recieves annual extract of all three databases: Collision Report and Analysis for Safer Highways (CRASH), Kentucky State Police Kentucky Inpatient Hospitalization Claims Files, Kentucky Office of Health Policy Kentucky Outpatient Services Claims Files, Kentucky Office of Health Policy Second we will use this linked database, and similar databases from previous years, to produce a comprehensive report on charges resulting from traffic crashes in Kentucky from 2008 to 2014. We will report total, mean and median charges for inpatient and outpatient services provided to injured occupants, by: Year (i.e. trend in charges over time) Expected source of payment (E.g. commercial/private, Medicaid, Medicare, Worker's Comp, etc. Age group, gender, race and ethnicity County, Area Development and Highway District of residence and of crash occurrence Restraint use, collision type, vehicle type, person type and helmet use (for motorcyclists and bicyclists) Principal diagnosis (nature and bodily location of primary injury, e.g. traumatic brain injury, neck injury, lower extremity injury, etc.) The objective of the second aim is to increase accessibility to the integrated CRASH-Inpatient-Outpatient data, particularly the data on crash-related hospital and emergency department charges. In order to measure accessibility of the information we will maintain a register of (a) persons who received a copy of the report directly from us and (b) persons who downloaded the report from our web site. We will conduct a follow-up survey of those users to assess the number of occasions on which they searched for specific charge-related information in the report, and the number of those occasions on which they were able to find the information they needed in the report. The justification for this project comes from the 2012 KY Traffic Records Assessment. Specifically, the Major Recommendations for the Statewide Injury Surveillance System (SWISS) component of the traffic records system include the following recommendation: "Coordinate with Kentucky Traffic Records Advisory Committee to secure funding to continue the Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System program once NHTSA’s financial support ends.