A systems approach to monitoring trauma system performance

EXTENDED ABSTRACT: With the goal to provide the basis for future analytic studies we established a set of equations using integral calculus that could be used to monitor whole-of-system effectiveness of trauma systems. We report, for a given external cause category (ie road traffic injury), the descriptive epidemiology of trauma in all six states of Australia from 2000 to 2015, to demonstrate time trends in severe injury and deaths in the context of changes to societal level factors observed in the pre injury, acute care and rehabilitation environments.