Elmhurst Hospital Hosts Pedestrian Injury Summit
Hospital releases study showing traffic accidents as leading cause of blunt trauma injuries seen in ER. Physicians, government officials, and community activists to discuss ways to alleviate problem.
Dec 12, 2013
On Thursday, December 12th, physicians, hospital administrators, transportation and traffic safety experts and community activists will gather at Elmhurst Hospital Center (EHC) for a citywide pedestrian injury summit. The one-day symposium, part of a public education and outreach campaign developed by Elmhurst Hospital Center’s Trauma and Neurosurgery Departments, will examine pedestrian injuries and their impact on public health.
“Neighborhoods in Western and Central Queens, (the catchment area for Elmhurst Hospital Center), have seen an increasing rise in the number of traffic accidents involving pedestrians,” says Dr. Jaime Ullman, Elmhurst Hospital Center’s Director of Neurosurgery and one of the chief organizers of the event. “According to a recent study we conducted, traffic accidents involving pedestrians, especially those taking place on Queens Boulevard, Northern Boulevard, and Roosevelt Avenue, resulted in more than 20% of the injuries seen in Elmhurst Hospital Center’s Emergency Room.”
Ullman noted that this statistic is frightening. “Pedestrian injuries typically make up 9% to 25% of injuries seen at hospitals in other parts of the city.”
By analyzing EHC’s admissions data, Ullman and her investigative team also discovered that pedestrian injuries are one of the leading causes of individuals having to be hospitalized, sometimes for extended periods, due to suffering serious neurological damage.
Other summit participants include representatives from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), The New York State and New York City Departments of Transportation, NYPD, EMS, NYU School of Medicine and Jamaica Hospital. They will discuss the challenges faced by municipal governments, healthcare institutions, and community-based organizations seeking to raise public awareness regarding pedestrian injuries.
“We really need to make an aggressive, multi-lingual outreach effort to educate the public about these injuries,” adds Dr. Ullman when asked what additional steps she thought should be taken to help reduce the number of pedestrian injury victims. “In a way, I’d like to be put out of business, because we are seeing way too many patients with serious blunt trauma injuries that are entirely preventable.”
For more information about Elmhurst Hospital Center’s Pedestrian Injury Prevention Campaign, please contact Justin Chin, Assistant Director of External Affairs, by email at CHINJ6@nychhc.org or by phone at (718) 334-1259.
Contact: Ian Michaels (HHC) (212) 788-3339
About Elmhurst Hospital Center
Elmhurst Hospital Center (EHC) is the major tertiary care provider in the borough of Queens. The hospital is comprised of 545 beds and is a Level I Trauma Center, an Emergency Heart Care Station and a 911 receiving Hospital. It is the premiere health care organization for key areas such as Surgery, Cardiology, Women’s Health, Pediatrics, Rehabilitation Medicine, Renal and Mental Health Services.
Elmhurst Hospital Center serves an area of approximately one million people. This community is recognized as the most ethnically diverse in the world. Last year, EHC received 693,600 ambulatory care visits as well as receiving 130,042 Emergency Room visits making it one of the busiest ERs in New York City. Over 4,200 babies were delivered at Elmhurst last year alone-the most in this region. Ensuring accessible health care is our priority.
About HHC
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) is a $6.7 billion integrated healthcare delivery system with its own 420,000 member health plan, MetroPlusHealth, and is the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country. HHC serves 1.4 million New Yorkers every year and more than 475,000 are uninsured. HHC provides medical, mental health and substance abuse services through its 11 acute care hospitals, four skilled nursing facilities, six large diagnostic and treatment centers and more than 70 community based clinics. HHC Health and Home Care also provides in-home services for New Yorkers. HHC was the 2008 recipient of the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission’s John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality. For more information, visit www.nychhc.org/hhc or find us on facebook.com/NYCHealthSystem or twitter.com/NYCHealthSystem.