UAB Synopsis, Vol. 27, No. 4, February 4, 2008
The Birmingham Regional Emergency Medical Services System (BREMSS), one of six of Alabama’s regional Emergency Medical Services, is expanding the BREMSS Trauma System to serve the entire state. Previously the system that provides continuous, up-to-the-minute information on hospital resource availability covered seven counties: Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, St. Clair, Shelby, Walker, and Winston.
“During the past 11 years, the Birmingham metropolitan area has experienced a 12% decrease in trauma-related deaths while the death rate in the rest of the state was unchanged,” says BREMSS Executive Director Joe Acker.
The Alabama Legislature approved this expansion of the statewide trauma system, which is under the leadership of the Department of Public Health.
“Alabama will have the first statewide system of this type in the United States,” says John Campbell, MD, medical director of the Alabama Department of Public Health’s Office of Emergency Medical Services and Trauma. “The system will serve as a model for the nation.”
BREMSS coordinates the Regional Trauma System through its Trauma Communication Center (TCC) and LifeTrac system, which assesses trauma and stroke center availability as well as hospital diversion to ensure people in emergency situations are transported to the facility that can handle their condition. Hospital participation in the program is voluntary.
The system also monitors for biological and chemical events, assists in mass casualty incidents, and links emergency teams and ambulances within the network of participating hospitals.
Because trauma patients’ survival rates improve dramatically when they are evaluated, treated, and transported to the correct hospital within the first hour after an accident, UAB researchers began work in the early 1990s on a project to evaluate methods to improve EMS response time to automobile collisions. Epidemiologist Gerald McGwin Jr, PhD, principal investigator, worked on the project with researchers from the Injury Control Research Center and the University Transportation Center. The group anticipates that Alabama’s motor vehicle collision mortality rates will improve with implementation of a statewide system to identify available trauma centers and route patients to those centers with current capability and capacity to treat trauma.
BREMSS staff will coordinate implementation of the statewide system. When the system is in place across the state, BREMSS TCC will route all Alabama trauma patients to the closest appropriate trauma hospital.