Symposium on trauma for the general surgeon. 1. An accident health care program: the organization and development of regional trauma units.

Fifteen thousand deaths, 3 million hospital bed--days and billions of dollars per year are the cost of dealing with accidents in Canada. Our present methods of caring for the seriously injured need revision. The available data on accidents, although extensive, are not sufficiently complete to allow clear definition of the Canadian accident profile. We are unable to explain why Canadians are subject to a 25% greater risk of motor vehicle accidents than are Americans. The development of a Canadian accident health care delivery and audit system is proposed that would provide an improved standard of health care and supply a data base for the advancement of effective programs for accident prevention. The system would include radio-equipped ambulance stations strategically located between regional trauma units, which would be equipped to care for the majority of injured patients. Those severely injured patients who could not be handled by the regional trauma units would be transferred to comprehensive trauma units established in the major referral centres. A trauma registry set up in every province would collect data on each patient and accident to provide an accurate provincial accident profile and a national trauma institute would correlate provincial data.