Improving Motor Vehicle Crash-Related Data Quality and Completeness

Kentucky's motor vehicle crash fatalities have risen alarmingly in the past two years, by 13.2% from 2014 to 2015, and by another 9.7% from 2015 to 2016. While some of this increase doubtless reflects growth in highway traffic volume, reducing fatalities also requires a more robust statewide trauma system. The most recent Traffic Record Asessment report recommended that the state "increase the number of hospitals reporting to the trauma registry." We continue to pursue this goal by adding hospitals to our roster of reporting facilities, despite the financial pressures faced by some of the smaller rural facilities. While we fell three hospitals short of our goal of 30 reporting entities in 2015, we have had expressions of interest from five potential new members thus far in FY 2017. Experience indicates that not all of these hospitals will be prepared to initiate reporting in the period for which funding is requested. We therefore request funding in the amount of $7,500 to support software activation for three Level IV facilities in FY 2018 and $3,500 for reporting software at the Level III rate. We also request $20,000 to support the state's trauma registry software as we have no other support for this critical initiative. We must continue support of the state system in order to maintain the state trauma registry as a whole. We continue to add cases and refine our use of trauma registry data to support system performance improvement. The American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, which verifies trauma facility status at Levels I, II, and III, has initiated a mandatory set of quality improvement metrics which are being integrated into Kentucky's system-wide performance improvement initiatives. This initiative should have the additional impact of improving the consistency and accuracy of data coding across the entire trauma system