Understanding childhood injuries in rural areas: Using Rural Acute Hospital Data Register to address previous data deficiencies

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The state of childhood injury in rural areas of Victoria is poorly understood. Currently only data on those children transferred from smaller hospital settings to larger settings appear in existing government datasets, significantly underestimating the characteristics of injury. METHODS: Detailed emergency presentation data (Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset [VEMD] and non-VEMD) that makes up the Rural Acute Hospital Data Register database was collected and compared among children (aged 0-14 years) who have a principal diagnosis of injury. RESULTS: Of the 8647 episodes of care identified for injured children aged 0-14 years, 3257 children were managed initially at smaller hospitals that do not report episode data to existing datasets. CONCLUSIONS: The Rural Acute Hospital Data Register database captures the presentations at low-resource sites and highlights as much as a 35% deficit in the data that is currently available to inform injury prevention and safety initiatives in Victoria.