Incremental cost-effectiveness of trauma service improvements for road trauma casualties: experience of an Australian major trauma centre.

Conclusion Trauma service funding enhancements that enabled a quality improvement program at a single major trauma centre were found to be cost-effective based on current international and Australian standards.What is known about this topic? Trauma quality improvement programs have been implemented across most designated trauma hospitals in an effort to improve hospital care processes and outcomes for injured patients. These involve a combination of education and training, the use of audit and key performance indicators.What does this paper add? A trauma quality improvement program initiated at an Australian Major Trauma Centre was found to be cost-effective over 12 years with respect to years of life saved in road trauma patients.What are the implications for practitioners? The results suggest that adequate resourcing of trauma centres to enable quality improvement programs may be a cost-effective measure to reduce in-hospital mortality following road trauma. PMID: 26363826 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research