The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) is part of "a major NHS success story" as new figures show around 600 more patients are surviving major trauma since changes to services in April 2012. 

The 16,000 life-threatening major traumas are the biggest cause of death in children and adults under the age of 40. In all, some 37,000 are seriously injured in England annually.

An independent audit, commissioned by NHS England and produced by the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN), shows that patients in England have a 30 percent improved chance of surviving severe injuries after the introduction of Regional Trauma Networks across England in April 2012. Full details of the independent audit produced by TARN can be found on the NHS England website.

More than 1,200 of the West Midland’s most severely injured casualties have passed through the front doors of QEHB since April 2013 in its capacity as a Major Trauma Centre (MTC).

The hospital’s specialist teams treat the most complex injuries, including massive internal bleeding, brain injury, multiple fractures and cardiac failure.

Without the MTC system it is possible that many of these patients would not have survived while others may not have realised their full potential for rehabilitation and recovery without the early interventions they received.

The hospital’s status as an MTC complements the fact that it also treats all injured British servicemen and women injured overseas. Any military patients wounded in combat are evacuated from war zones via the aero medical service and brought to QEHB for treatment before being discharged, in the majority of cases, to Headley Court, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Surrey.

Professor Sir Keith Porter, the UK’s only Professor of Traumatology and MTC Clinical Lead said: “A key part of the MTC role is that we often have several specialities involved in polytrauma. That has required a service redesign both internally and externally and a new way of working across all divisions.

“Our MTC consultants include members of the military, ensuring their learning is shared across the civilian patient pathway, making our centre quite unique.”

QEHB is at the heart of the Birmingham, Black Country, Hereford and Worcestershire Trauma Network, which went live in March 2012.

In the whole of the 2012/13 financial year, a total of 1,073 major trauma patients arrived at the hospital.

Between April 2013 and January this year, 1,254 people were brought to QEHB due to its Major Trauma Centre status. These were patients who triggered the West Midlands Ambulance Service MTC criteria.

The majority – 27.5% – of these patients arrived in the Emergency Department following road traffic accidents. Falls accounted for 15.7% and stabbing/sharp instrument injuries 8.7%. Of the major trauma cases, 79.3% were admitted to the hospital while 13.4% were discharged home. 

Mondays and Tuesdays see the largest number of patients arriving, between 08:00 and 17:00. At the same time there has been an increase in overnight activity (20:00 – 08:00) over the weekends, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

An extremely positive improvement in the treatment of trauma patients is that therapists provide an initial rehabilitation prescription within the first 24/48 hours of an MTC patient arriving. This guides not only their initial treatment but their ongoing care, including information necessary for subsequent receiving hospitals and external agencies.