Enhance Completeness, Timeliness, and Accuracy of Kentucky Motor Vehicle Trauma Data

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's 2012 assessment of Kentucky traffic records included trauma registry expansion as a major recommendation. The current proposal requests support needed to fulfill this NHTSA recommendation. We have reached a critical phase in the development of the Kentucky Trauma Registry (KTR). While KTR has made significant progress in FY 2015 towards its goals of improving the completeness, timeliness and accuracy of reporting, strategic deficits must be addressed if the KTR is to provide a comprehensive data source for reducing the toll of highway traffic injury and death across the state. We expect to have 30 reporting facilities by the end of FY 2015, or nearly one-third of all the state's general acute care hospitals. However, we still lack geographic coverage in several important areas of the state, notably western, south-central, northern, and northeastern Kentucky. Data from hospitals in these areas will provide a much more comprehensive account of highway traffic-related trauma in the state as a whole. Funding is requested to support start-up software activation for 4 additional hospitals strategically located in these areas. In addition, we will work with our state trauma advisory council to make several latent data elements in the reporting system accessible for the development of quality indicators that allow targeted identification of areas where performance can be improved. Specifically, we request funding to: 1. Provide first-year financial support for software or web-based portal activation in facilities that initiate reporting to the state's trauma registry; 2. Consult with the state trauma system's clinical leadership to update and expand the the state's reporting system software so that it includes the data elements necessary to develop uniform performance indicators for all participating hospitals; 3. Support essential project staff travel to in-state meetings; and 4. Produce analyses for the annual statewide KTR report as well as responses to ad hoc requests for specific areas of concern. Of note, these activities have no other funding source at present but we continue to seek alternatives or supplements to KOHS support