title: Comparison of accident and emergency with police road injury data.
abstract: This paper examines the consistency of police and hospital reporting of outcomes of road traffic crashes using a database of linked police crash reports and accident and emergency department data. The database used consisted of linked records of road traffic crashes in Western Australia for the period of October 1, 1987 to December 31, 1988 from police reported casualty crashes, the discharge records from all hospital admissions in Western Australia, the Registrar-General's death records, and records for each ambulance trip as a result of a road crash in the metropolitan area of Perth. The results suggest that police records of hospital admissions from the group of accident and emergency attendances underestimated the total by approximately 15%.
authors.affiliation: Road Accident Prevention Research Unit, Department of Public Health, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands.
authors.forename: L R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Cercarelli
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Rosman
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Ryan
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015982:Bias; D016208:Databases, Factual; D003644:Death Certificates; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015601:Injury Severity Score; D008297:Male; D008498:Medical Record Linkage; D008875:Middle Aged; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010351:Patient Discharge / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016495:Police; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D014904:Western Australia / Q000453:epidemiology