In addition to standardizing trauma data, the National Trauma Data Standard (NTDS) offers a variety of other benefits.
Business Structure and Management Assistance
The dataset will provide a business model for the injury community. This model will help develop:
- Protocols that are justified by factual evidence
- Budgets that can be defended by actual data
- A method to analyze performance of trauma services
- State-to-state comparison models
- Benchmarks for standards of care
Drive Policy and Funding
The dataset will allow hospitals to:
- Determine areas for potential QA intervention
- Provide data to justify new funding or support existing programs
- Provide a basis for ongoing funding support
Education—Trauma Training and Curricula
The dataset promotes the importance of trauma care in the health care system by:
- Providing a better understanding of injury trends
- Improving the quality of trauma treatment
- Modifying the existing injury prevention education and other programs
Evaluating Patient and Injury Outcomes
The dataset will help:
- Establish reliable outcome measures
- Monitor trauma systems
- Determine which treatments are effective
- Identify and reduce errors
- Identify unmet needs and priorities
- Focus on data driven decision making
- Evaluate patients throughout the spectrum of care
Evaluating Resources for Disaster and Domestic Preparedness
The dataset will provide opportunities for improvement of current disaster policies, procedures, and preparedness by:
- Providing further analysis tools for FEMA and other organizations
- Providing better data for disaster research
Facilitating Research Efforts
The dataset will provide access to a national trauma database and Trauma Quality Improvement Program, which will:
- Identify national trends
- Provide a large sample of standardized data
- Allow opportunities to generate research hypotheses
- Facilitate national benchmarking