Injury Prevention through data linkage. Phase 3: The linkage of hospital inpatient data to police road traffic accident reports in East and West Sussex

The scope of the report

This executive summary gives an overview of the road crash data generated by linking hospital inpatient data to police road traffic accident reports in the combined study area of East Sussex, Brighton & Hove, and West Sussex. (Following this, separate tables and figures will be produced for (1) East Sussex (excluding Brighton and Hove), (2) East Sussex Brighton & Hove, and (3) West Sussex.)

The size of the problem

Accidental injury is an important health problem, and road traffic crashes are one of the most important causes of accidental injury. In the period 1 April 1995 to 31 March 1998, there were 3,166 casualties recorded as 'Serious' or 'Fatal' on the police's road traffic accident database (STATS19) and there were 2,666 admissions to hospital recorded as road traffic crashes in the combined study area.

The need for data linkage

These data sources individually have limitations for the investigation of cause and the identification of potential methods of prevention. It was hypothesised that the linkage of hospital inpatient data records to STATS19 would provide a richer source of data for these purposes.

STATS19 data is inaccurate

As a result of data linkage, problems were identified with the accuracy of the STATS19 data. The magnitude and nature of these problems could result in injury prevention planning being misinformed.

The linked database is incomplete….

The linked database is also potentially biased; it is estimated that only 50% of RTAs admitted to hospital are included in the linked database. The most complete linkage was achieved for pedestrians, and car drivers, the least complete for pedal cyclists.

…but the evidence suggests that the linked database is superior to STATS19 for describing non-fatal serious injury

The linked database is probably more suitable than STATS19 for investigating cause and prevention of RTAs resulting in non-fatal serious injuries since it appears to be less biased than STATS19 data. Reassuringly, the patterns of occurrence of non-fatal serious injuries from the linked database were similar to those for the hospital inpatient data, when tabulated by age, sex, and road user group. The patterns of occurrence for the STATS19 data was different to both of these.