HIMSS25: Enhancing trauma care automated data analysis tool development

Aubrey May Agcon of the Narrows Institute for Biomedical Research and Education is a clinical research nurse deployed at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Corona Clinic and VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, Manhattan. Agcon is speaking at HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition on commonly used approaches for determining appropriate trauma triage.

Acgon will discuss how she created a data analysis tool to improve the process of analyzing trauma over triage and under triage reports, providing enhancements over the traditional manual calculation, and how she collaborated with a Level 1 Trauma Center, which provided her with the dataset from their trauma registry to evaluate the tool’s accuracy and performance.

MobiHealthNews: How does appropriate triage influence patient outcomes and resource utilization?

Aubrey May Agcon: Determining appropriate triage by looking at trauma overtriage and undertriage in trauma centers ensures patients receive appropriate care based on injury severity, improving outcomes and optimizing resource use. This minimizes delays in critical interventions, reduces mortality and morbidity, and ensures efficient allocation of resources like personnel and equipment. By reducing overtriage and undertriage, trauma centers can enhance patient safety and operational efficiency.

MHN: What are the commonly used approaches for determining appropriate trauma triage, including the Cribari Matrix Method and the Standardized Triage Assessment Tool?

Agcon: To identify the most commonly used retrospective methods to determine undertriage and overtriage rates in trauma centers, each has its distinctive characteristics and applications.

Cribari Matrix Method (CMM): This retrospective method evaluates overtriage and undertriage rates based on the Injury Severity Score (ISS). It is a widely used approach, but many argue that this method may overlook physiological factors leading to subjectivity.

Need for Trauma Intervention (NFTI): This method helps identify major trauma and determines whether a patient needs a trauma team activation or escalation of trauma care. It evaluates specific criteria associated with trauma resource utilization, such as the use of blood products within four hours, emergency department to interventional radiology, operating room and intensive care unit disposition, the use of ventilator and death within 60 hours of arrival, to determine triage appropriateness.

Standardized Triage Assessment Tool (STAT): This tool combines CMM with the NFTI criteria, improving accuracy by considering injury severity and required medical interventions. This tool helps evaluate triage patterns and assign triage designations to patients, whether their trauma activations were appropriate.

MHN: How does the automated tool improve workflow efficiency in trauma PI processes?

Agcon: The automated tools enhance trauma performance improvement process efficiency by reducing manual errors in data analysis and improving decision-making. They help trauma providers determine trauma triage appropriateness and allocate more time to focus on critical areas in trauma care, such as evaluating trauma team activation protocol and criteria, identifying areas for improvement and taking action to enhance patient safety and resource allocation. In turn, this can influence trauma outcomes positively by reducing morbidity and mortality and optimizing resource utilization.

MHN: Can you Identify one area where participants can employ strategies to optimize their workflow?

Agcon: Wherever we are, we can optimize workflow through task automation. Tools can automate repetitive tasks like data entry, scheduling or documentation. Creating dashboards or automated reports can reduce time-consuming tasks in our daily workflow. All in all, utilizing available tools or developing new ones can save time, minimize errors and allow a focus on high-value activities, which enhances overall efficiency and productivity.

Aubrey May Agcon’s session, “Enhancing Trauma Care: Automated Data Analysis Tool Development,” Tuesday, March 04 at 1:30pm at HIMSS25 in Las Vegas.