After service members or civilians are wounded in a war zone, medics treating the wounded develop a report that is immediately uploaded to the internet. Next, the medic completes a Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) card documenting the casualty’s wounds and treatment.
Depending on the seriousness of the injury, helicopters are made available to start taking the wounded to a hospital or other facility for further treatment. While in flight, the flight medical team continues the flow of information and generates a Patient Care Record but at the same time, fills out an After Action Report.
Team members gather data from the combat medical records and upload the data into a registry which is then analyzed by teams in the U.S. The next step is for the team of experts at Joint Base San Antonio to use the information to update the best medical practice guidelines.
While the casualties are inbound, medical personnel prepare the emergency room. The doctors and nurses meet with the flight medical team upon arrival and exchange information regarding treatment. As the wounded receive care upon arriving at the emergency department, the hospital personnel in the emergency room keep documenting the care. Further care proceeds by doctor orders as care coordination continues to take place.
The reports and data supplied on the wounded that start on the battlefield are the first step in the data flow to the Joint Theater Trauma System (JTTS). JTTS is an organized effort supported by all services and is available to not only all battlefield wounded service members but also to others with non-battlefield injuries.
JTTS has improved communication among clinicians in the evacuation chain to ensure continuity of care and enables all of the personal involved in treating the wounded to have access to the data.
The backbone of the JTTS system is the Joint Theater Trauma Registry (JTTR) which operates as a data repository by collecting and hosting DOD trauma data. The JTTR is not the medical record, not a research database, not a patient tracking tool, but it is the largest combat injury database in existence. All of the information entered helps the system gather information on best practices across the military medical system to help prevent further injuries and improve care.