Compliance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention field triage guidelines in an established trauma system.

Background: Regionalization of trauma care reduces mortality and has clear guidelines for transport to the highest level of trauma care. Whether prehospital providers follow the CDC triage algorithm remains to be determined.

Study Design: We performed a 5-year retrospective cohort analysis of linked data from Washington State's Central Region Trauma Registry (CRTR) and King County Emergency Medical Services (KCEMS).

Identifying survivors with traumatic craniocervical dissociation: a retrospective study.

Background: Traumatic craniocervical dissociation (CCD), which includes atlanto-occipital dissociation and vertical distraction between C1-C2, is often an immediately fatal injury that has increasingly been associated with survival to the hospital. Our aim was to identify survivors of CCD based on clinical presentation.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the Harborview Medical Center Trauma Registry and the King County Medical Examiners database from 2001 to 2006.

Possibilities and challenges in occupational injury surveillance of day laborers.

Background: Day laborers in the US, comprised largely of undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, suffer high rates of occupational injury according to recent estimates. Adequate surveillance methods for this highly transient, largely unregulated group do not currently exist. This study explores chart abstraction of hospital-based trauma registry records as a potential injury surveillance method for contingent workers and day laborers.

Cooperative Cardiovascular Project (CCP) quality improvement in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

The Cooperative Cardiovascular Project (CCP) is a nationwide quality improvement project (quality indicator measurement, feedback, remeasurement) in Medicare acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients sponsored by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). In Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, 3,472 baseline records were abstracted from 76 hospitals from January 1994 to February 1995. After feedback, 2,270 remeasurements were collected from October 1996 to May 1997.

Geographic variation in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction: the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project.

Context: Quality indicators for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction include pharmacologic therapy, reperfusion, and smoking cessation advice, but these therapies may not be administered to all patients who could benefit from them.

Objective: To assess geographic variation in adherence to quality indicators for treatment of acute myocardial infarction.

Design: Inception cohort using data from the Health Care Financing Administration Cooperative Cardiovascular Project.