Data linkage between health and compensation systems improves the profiling of transport-related injuries

Transport-related injury often requires contacts with both health and compensation systems and imposes a significant burden on these systems. This study sought to explore the benefits of linking data sources for profiling land transport-related injury events and examine the characteristics of transport-related injuries in Queensland, Australia. Retrospective population-based data were sourced from emergency department, hospital, and compensation data systems for the period January 2012 to December 2017. Descriptive statistics, including frequencies, percentages, and ratios, were used to describe the incidence of index transport-related injury events by demographic and mode of transport characteristics, while a chi-square test was used to test for variations in the proportion of events among groups over time. There were 164,248 transport-related injury events recorded during the study period, with an annual incidence rate of 577 per 100,000 population. 86.5 % of events existed in health system data, 26.2 % in compensation system data, while 12.7 % existed in both health and compensation system data. The incidence of transport-related injury events was highest among males (679 per 100,000 population), individuals aged 15–24 years old (1,021 per 100,000 population) and in remote areas (758 per 100,000 population). Most of the transport-related injuries who sought hospital-based treatment and/or compensation involved cars (46.6 %), with drivers (40.1 %) being the most frequently injured. Linked health and compensation system data can better reveal the burden of transport-related injuries within a population. However, the management and interpretation of linked data sources requires subject matter expertise and development of linkage logic to ensure the accuracy of this estimation.