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- Title
Rural Trauma: Is Trauma Designation Associated With Better Hospital Outcomes?
- Authors
Bowman, Stephen M.; Zimmerman, Frederick J.; Sharar, Sam R.; Baker, Margaret W.; Martin, Diane P.
- Abstract
Context: While trauma designation has been associated with lower risk of death in large urban settings, relatively little attention has been given to this issue in small rural hospitals. Purpose: To examine factors related to in-hospital mortality and delayed transfer in small rural hospitals with and without trauma designation. Methods: Analysis of data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for discharges between 1998 and 2003 of patients hospitalized with moderate to major traumatic injury in nonfederal, short-stay rural hospitals with annual discharges of 1,500 or fewer patients (N = 9,590). Logistic regression was used to control for patient and hospital characteristics, stratifying by hospital volume. Main outcome measures were in-hospital death and transfer to another acute care facility after initial admission. Findings: A total of 333 patients (3.5%) died in-hospital. After adjusting for patient, injury and hospital characteristics, in-hospital death was more likely among patients treated at the non-designated hospitals with fewer than 500 discharges per year (OR 2.35; 95% CI 1.25-4.41) than among patients treated at similar trauma-designated hospitals. Patients admitted to non-designated hospitals were more likely to be transferred after admission, although this finding was significant only in the larger-volume hospitals with discharges of 500-1,500 per year (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.08-1.83). Conclusions: Associations between trauma designation and outcomes in rural hospitals warrant further study to determine whether expanding designation to more rural hospitals might lead to further improvement in trauma outcomes.
- Subjects
DEATH; RURAL hospitals; MORTALITY; HOSPITAL administration education; TRAUMATISM; LOGISTIC regression analysis
- Publication
Journal of Rural Health, 2008, Vol 24, Issue 3, p263
- ISSN
0890-765X
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1748-0361.2008.00167.x