Dr. Joshua B. Brown is the Samuel P. Harbison Endowed Assistant Professor of Surgery, Assistant Professor of Critical Care Medicine, and Assistant Professor of Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as principal investigator at the university’s Prehospital Resource Organization and Delivery of Care in Trauma Systems (PRODCTS) laboratory. Dr. Brown’s research interests focus on the impact of triage patterns on patient outcomes in Pennsylvania.
Dr. Brown’s research team used hospitalization data from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) for a study entitled Evaluating the Impact of Pre-Hospital Under-Triage on Injured Patients to compare outcomes between patients who were under-triaged, meaning they were taken to a non-trauma center despite having significant injuries, versus those who were appropriately triaged and transported to a trauma center after injury.
Dr. Brown shared some of the findings, “We’ve been able to show that patients from rural areas are more likely to be under-triaged, which is not surprising as there are fewer trauma centers in rural areas. Indeed, patients who are under-triaged have a higher risk of mortality than those who are appropriately triaged.” He further stated, “We also found that older patients are less likely to be discharged home after being under-triaged and more frequently go to skilled nursing care or other post-acute care facilities compared to their counterparts who are appropriately triaged.”
Being able to obtain a dataset that includes all hospitalizations from Pennsylvania hospitals was essential for this study. Dr. Brown stated, “PHC4 data has been a great resource for us and has a lot of utility across a wide range of potential comparative effectiveness and health care delivery studies in Pennsylvania. We found the process of purchasing and accessing PHC4’s timely data to be very straightforward, and the staff worked proficiently with us throughout the process.” Dr. Brown intends to publish the results from his study in a scientific journal in the near future.
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