OHS, UK - KY Crash Severity Data Integration

Abstract OHS, Improving Kentucky Crash Severity Data Through Integration of Health- Related Databases Traffic safety efforts to prevent and reduce the severity of crashes rely on accurate crash severity reporting. Currently the KABCO scale is the standard injury severity metric used to assess the severity of crashes. While the federal government has made efforts to standardize KABCO operational definitions across states, subtle, yet important differences still exist. In addition, real-time KABCO determinations are made by the reporting law enforcement officer on scene. Given that injury severity is just one of the many fields the reporting officer is responsible for completing on scene, the crash report alone may not reflect an exhaustive examination of injury severity, particularly post-crash for non-fatal crashes. Conversely, medical provider reports of injury severity provide comprehensive details regarding the patient’s condition, not only at the time of the crash, but also through the duration of their medical treatment. Crash data that is integrated with health-related databases containing various severity metrics will provide needed access to detailed, crash-level severity information and significantly improve crash data quality and safety-related decision making. This project will assess and improve the accuracy, completeness, and integration of the Kentucky crash database through the systematic integration of health-related databases that include medical-based reporting of crash injury severity. The team proposes to link emergency department, inpatient hospitalization, and outpatient hospitalization records with crash records to greatly improve the quality of crash severity information available to safety practitioners. Goals and Objectives: To expand the capabilities of practitioners who use crash injury severity data to make safety improvements To supplement statewide crash data with a more precise, more comprehensive injury severity scale To create a methodology to collect, de-identify, and link medical data annually To maintain a secure, linked database for future research