Project Overview:
In 2021, someone was seriously injured approximately every two minutes, and someone died approximately every two hours in a crash in Texas. Most of these individuals, along with others sustaining lesser injuries, require medical intervention by Emergency Medical Service (EMS) and trauma professions. To comprehensively understand the intricate relationship between safety, health, and equity, Texas has linked crash data with injury records from EMS and Trauma Registry over approximately the last five years using probabilistic methods. “Probabilistic record linkage attempts to link two pieces of information together using multiple, possibly non-unique, keys.” While probabilistic linking has been effective in this use case, it is time-intensive, and the lack of unique keys leaves room for error (incorrect or no match) in the linking process. An alternative to probabilistic linking is to employ deterministic methods that link data based on a unique ID. This deterministic linking process will allow Texas to improve the timeliness, accuracy, completeness, uniformity, integration and accessibility of the linked EMS and Trauma Registries and crash database.
Key Takeaways:
The key takeaways from this project are pending as this project is currently being conducted.
Our Approach:
For this project, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has funded the exploration of linking Texas crash data with Texas EMS and Trauma Registry records. The project will have two primary components:
- conducting a pilot program to integrate the call number/incident number from law enforcement into the EMS Patient Care Report in EMS Regional Advisory Council (RAC) A&B, which consists of Amarillo and Lubbock, and their surrounding areas; and
- identifying how other states are using a unique ID to link crash and EMS/Trauma datasets.
This effort is led by the Unique ID Integration Team, which has representatives from RAC A&B, Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI), TxDOT and TxDSHS. TTI is the primary funding recipient and is responsible for the coordination and reporting of project activities.
Findings:
The findings from this project are pending as this project is currently being conducted.
Resources:
- Resources for use by EMS personnel in RAC A&B:
- Overview of Pilot Project (EMS)
- Order form for pocket cards that can be used to share Call Number at the scene
- Instructions for Entering the Crash ID can be obtained by emailing Emily Martin at [email protected]. In the email, please include the name of your agency and your software provider.
- Resources for use by law enforcement officers in RAC A&B:
For more information on this project, please contact:
Emily Martin
TTI Assistant Research Scientist
(979) 317-2542
[email protected]
Eva Shipp
Associate Professor
Texas A&M School of Public Health
[email protected]
Project Title: Linking Crash and EMS/Trauma Data Through a Universal Unique Identifier
Project Start and End Dates: October 1, 2023 – September 30, 2024
Author List: Emily Martin, Eva Shipp, Marcie Perez, Ashesh Pant, Kanchan Pandey, Mahin Ramezani
Sponsor/Funding Source: Texas Department of Transportation – Behavioral Traffic Safety