Towards an inclusive system for major trauma
KCE Reports 281 (2017)
In the area of acute care, there is an international trend towards “integrated trauma systems”. Hospitals must collaborate within these networks, according to their capacity to manage these patients. The most serious injuries are sent as quickly as possible to “Major Trauma Centres”, i.e. centres meeting extremely high requirements in terms of equipment, personnel qualification and availability (24/7). Our Belgian hospitals are already very good, but if we want to set up such an integrated system at home we must first solve serious coordination problems between the various actors. The current reform of the hospital landscape offers the opportunity for this. Taking into account travel times, local geographic specificities, population coverage, the minimum volume of patients to be treated and the availability of existing mobile teams, we estimated that it would be reasonable to have 4 to 7 Major Trauma Centers for the whole Belgian territory.
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