Trauma registry
The Québec trauma registry (Système d’information du Registre des traumatismes du Québec, SIRTQ) was the fruit of collaboration between the MSSS, the SAAQ and a research team from McGill University. Thanks to this registry, it has been possible since 1998 to draft a portrait of all trauma victims admitted to designated trauma care facilities in Québec, about 20,000 victims a year. The SIRTQ is used mainly to assess the performance of the trauma network facilities and thus to support continuous quality improvement. It is also serves as a central source of information for a variety of traumatology research projects.
All designated trauma centres are required to collect certain SIRTQ data, which are then not only available for local use by the facility but are also transferred to and stored in a central data base managed by Québec’s health insurance board (Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec, RAMQ). Not only are sociodemographic, medical and paramedical data collected for SIRTQ, but also data on diagnoses, surgeries, radiological and neurological examinations and trauma severity indices. The SIRTQ data cannot be used to track care paths, identify professionals involved or quantify resources used. Analysis of SIRTQ data by local trauma care committees does, nonetheless, allow hospitals to more rapidly identify clinical and functional issues and to introduce corrective measures as quickly as possible [MSSS, 2007].
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