Automatic Crash Notification Project: Assessing Montana’s Motor Vehicle Crash and Related Injury Data Infrastructure

Highway crashes exact an enormous human and financial cost. The problem is proportionately more acute in rural states. Points of intervention include immediate response to crashes and community supports to individuals injured in crashes. Two studies were conducted. The first examined the context of routing advanced automatic crash notification (AACN) messages into the emergency response system and demonstrating the feasibility of doing so. The second examined the referral process from medical treatment to community return. The effort to integrate AACN data into the existing emergency response system culminated in the demonstration of the receipt of simulated AACN information by the Missoula Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) and the subsequent real-time sharing of this information with Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and hospital-based stakeholders. The project also included the development of a computerized database infrastructure, which was designed to capture OnStar AACN crash data starting in July 2012. The effort to develop and expand models for providing community supports to individuals injured in car crashes culminated in the development of new strategies for marketing the Resource Referral System – now the Brain Injury Help Line – and an assessment of the effectiveness of various strategies for recruiting hospital emergency department participation. Since the beginning of the project, overall referrals to the Help Line increased from 148 to 222. Finally, these data were used to estimate the budget needed to expand the service to meet the potential need. That estimate suggests either the Brain Injury Association of Montana (BIAMT) Hot Line is underfunded or it is overstretched.