Western Mass Emergency Medical Services Committee, Inc.

Meeting: Trauma Services Committee

Date: December 12, 2001

Place: Living Room, McCallum Building, CDH, Northampton

Presiding: Mary Cushman, Chairman

Called to Order: 8:36 am

Adjourned: 9:35 am

Attendance:

Present: Brian Andrews, Mary Cushman, Tracy Disilva, Timothy Emhoff, Chris Hopewell, Jeffrey Lavoie, Linda Murphy, Richard Olsted, Ted White, Melanie Zamojski

Excused:

Absent:

Guests: Dawn Josefski

Minutes: There were no minutes to review.

Welcome and Introductions:

Ms. Cushman welcomed everyone to the re-established Region One Trauma Services Committee. This committee has been on hold since 1997 waiting for the passage of EMS 2000. Ms. Cushman sees this as a fluid type of committee, which will develop in conjunction with the State Trauma Committee. The idea is to standardize the level of trauma care throughout the region and the state.

Field Triage:

Ms. Murphy raised the question of appropriateness of field triage. It appears that patient’s are not always going to the appropriate facility. Dr. Emhoff stated that once we begin to collect data we should be better able to evaluate the system. Ms. Cushman pointed out that there is a piece being developed at the State level that will include review of patient’s outcome to determine if the patient got to the right facility in a timely fashion. She feels that this might be an issue because previously hospitals were not willing to share that information.

State Trauma Subcommittees:

Designation Subcommittee –

Dr. Emhoff is on this committee and gave a report about their activities. Primarily the state is looking at using the ACS to verify designation of level 1, 2 and 3 hospitals with level 4 to be designated by the State DPH. He stated that perhaps the State might tie Medicaid reimbursement to hospitals being involved in this system. He also reported that across the country there is a commonality of data sets being collected but there is no one set in use. In our region and state there are some hospitals not even collecting data.

Clinical Subcommittee –

Mr. Hopewell is on this committee. They have been working on revising the Trauma Triage protocol and have sent their recommendation to the State Trauma committee. They are also updating recommendations for Pediatric trauma care and will begin to look at the education piece for EMTs needing to implement the updated trauma system and triage protocols.

Data/Registry Subcommittee –

Ms. Cushman reported that this committee is working on data points to be collected and how they will get transmitted. This will be done via hospitals; currently most services are using the computer program Trauma One.

Education/Injury Prevention Subcommittee –

Ms. Cushman reported that this is a newly formed subcommittee that will focus on the dissemination of standardized information regarding injury prevention and specific programs. This information will be for both EMS workers and the general public.

Further information on all of these committees can be found on the State Trauma Committee website at: http://www.state.ma.us/dph/oems/trauma/trauma.htm

Ms. Cushman will get a synopsis of each subcommittee and share them with this committee. Hopefully after members have a chance to review them then we can develop goals for our regional committee.

Mr. Hopewell wondered if we could get all hospital involved in this committee. Ms. Cushman said she would attempt to contact the hospitals not represented.

Next Meeting:

Wednesday January 9, 2002 at 8:30 am, Living Room, McCallum Building, Cooley Dickinson Hospital

Adjourn:

Motion made to adjourn at 9:35 a.m. Motion approved unanimously.

Dawn Josefski, Recorder