Among all Illinois hospitals, approximately one-third are designated by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) as either Level I or Level II Trauma Centers. These hospitals must submit data to IDPH on patients who (a) sustain traumatic injuries that require treatment at a trauma center and are then admitted to a trauma center; (b) are transferred to a trauma center; or (c) are dead-on-arrival or die in the emergency department. One of the strengths of the Trauma Registry is that it captures information on the external causes of injury (E-codes).

The following are NOT included in the Trauma Registry:

• Patients admitted to a hospital that is not designated as a trauma center
• Those who die at the scene of the traumatic injury but are not transported to a trauma center
• Patients treated in the emergency department of a designated trauma center for less than twelve hours, who are not transferred to or from another hospital.

It is important to emphasize (as noted above) that the Trauma Registry does not contain all fatal and non-fatal injury occurrences within the state of Illinois. The database maintains information on those fatally injured cases brought to a trauma center or those whose injuries required inpatient admission to a trauma center.

It is also important to note that the number of trauma centers as well as Level I and Level II designations have varied during the years covered by this reporting system.

A Trauma Registry record is generated by trauma centers on patients who meet the defined criteria as described above. Therefore, duplicate records will exist for those patients transferred from one trauma center to another during the course of their injury management (approximately 8 percent to 10 percent of cases).

Data for one trauma center are not included in the calendar year data for 2000.

In 2004, the Trauma Registry was upgraded to a web-based data collection system. Currently, data entry and submission occurs over the web interface and data are stored in a relational database management system. Some Trauma Registry data fields were revised or modified. Frequency distribution of values for some of these fields are likely affected by these changes. Please, review the data dictionary for field-specific changes.

As of 2008, there are no trauma centers in Illinois EMS Regions 4 and 5. Reporting of trauma admissions for these areas was dramatically reduced. However, starting in 2011 there are trauma centers designated by the Department in states adjacent to these regions (Indiana and Missouri).

The data available for querying in this reporting system is a subset of the entire Trauma Registry database. Nine data elements are utilized in this system. The data is aggregated in groups to protect record confidentiality and facilitate querying (for example, individuals age "53 years old" will be in the age grouping of "45-54" years old; while injuries that occurred in "February 1996" will be located in the time period of "1996 - Quarter One".) A brief description of each of the Trauma Registry data elements that can be queried in this system is listed below:

• Age – Provides specific age range groupings (e.g., age "1-4") for the patients contained in the database. The age is the patient's age on the date the admission occurred.
• Gender – Identifies the gender of the patients using categories of “male,” “female” or “unknown.”
• Race/Ethnicity – Identifies the race or ethnic origin of patients.
• Cause of Injury – Describes the underlying mechanism of injury. These groupings are based on external codes (E-Codes) from the World Health Organization, 9^th Revision, and International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9).

• Prehospital Transport – Describes the type of vehicle that transported the patient to the trauma center.
• Payor – Identifies the primary source of payment for the hospitalization charges.
• Discharge Status – Denotes the destination/status of the patient upon discharge from the hospital.
• Time Period – Denotes the time frame (by quarter) when the hospital admission occurred. NOTE: In order to query data for an entire year, all four quarters for that year need to be selected.
• EMS Region – Designates the geographic location of the trauma center by EMS region (Illinois is divided into 11 EMS regions). NOTE: "Select ALL" is the default category for this data element. To submit a query for the entire state of Illinois, select every option except the last one in the scroll box (i.e., " Out of Illinois"). To see a map detailing the EMS regions, click here.

For a more detailed description of the data elements, please check the Data Dictionary page.

For help on query instructions, please review the Tutorial page.

To run a trauma registry database query, please click on Query Form option.