Data submission deadlines

Q4 (April to June 2025) data is due 31 October 2025.

Please diarise the following deadlines for data submission.

Q4 2024-25 APR-JUN 2025 Due 31 OCT 2025

Q1 2025-26 JUL-SEP 2025 Due 31 JAN 2026

Q2 2025-26 OCT-DEC 2025 Due 30 APR 2026

Q3 2025-26 JAN-MAR 2025 Due 31 JUL 2026

Thank you to the Trauma Registry staff from all contributing registries and sites for your ongoing efforts to ensure that the Registry receives quality data in a timely manner. Please inform us of potential delays to the data submission deadline and let us know if there is anything we can help with. Once data is submitted, please email anztr.registry@monash.edu to confirm your submission.

wELCOME TO NEW BOARD MEMBERS

We would like to welcome the following new ANZTR Board Members:

- Dr Sean Chan as a representative for the Australian Capital Territory

- Dr Matthew Hope as a representative for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons

- Ms Nicole Kelly as a representative for Nursing

- Australian & New Zealand Trauma Society (ANZTS) President as a representative for ANZTS. Prof Dinesh Varma is the current sitting ANZTS president. Prof Belinda Gabbe is the incoming President, who will commence in October 2025.

anztr gOVERNANCE UPDATE

As part of ongoing efforts to ensure the continued strength and effectiveness of the ANZTR, the ANZTR Board recently undertook a review and update of the ANZTR governance documents. Given the evolving nature of its function, including the expansion of membership representation, as well as the current funding arrangements and the move to a national ethics approval process, it was necessary to update these documents to reflect our current operational and strategic needs.

The new Governance documents simplify the Governance structure to ensure direct independent nomination and representation from every State and Territory and New Zealand, representations from the key professional organisations in trauma, and expert representation from the trauma nursing and trauma quality improvement domains, along with a two yearly cycle of review and renewal built in. The new documents provide clarity about the roles and responsibilities of the Board, as well as procedural updates and edits to the supporting documents to reflect current naming conventions and processes.

anztr qualitative evaluation

The ANZTR team will be undertaking a qualitative evaluation of the ANZTR over the next few months to understand how clinicians and data managers interact with and utilise ANZTR data. This study aims to understand the lived experience and decision-making processes around registry use in clinical and administrative settings across 28 Australian sites and contributing bodies. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted (duration of 30-60 minutes) and data will be analysed using thematic analysis.

Findings from this study will be shared with participating sites and the ANZTR Board, and submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. Site-level quality improvement committees will receive summary reports. Feedback from participants may also be used to present to the Clinical Quality Registries division of the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care. Confidentiality and anonymity of both sites and participants will be prioritised for dissemination.

Public portal

The ANZTR Public Portal, originally released in December 2024, has undergone revisions based on stakeholder feedback. Content has been simplified, and navigation and usability have been improved. The updated Public Portal is now available on the ANZTR website at https://anztr.org.au/portal. Please contact anztr.registry@monash.edu for any further feedback.

BNTMDS UPDATE

Update to BNTMDS V2.2: The update to BNTMDS version 2.2 was led by the ANZTR Data Working Group (DWG), who progressed the updates via a consensus approach which included discussions at meetings and reviews via circular email. All contributing sites/state registries had input into the update via completion of surveys, which were designed to inform the feasibility of collection of newer and existing ANZTR data fields. The inclusion and exclusion criteria are much more clearly defined. The addition of a decision-making tree will support consistent application across contributing sites. This will result in improvement in the comparability and integrity of the ANZTR dataset and the ANZTR quality improvement work which comes from this. The key updates in this version are listed below.

Inclusion criteria: Inclusion of AIS2015 for calculating ISS threshold
Exclusion criteria: Clarification of re-presentations, examples for comorbid and frail patient exclusions, pre-injury care limitations, condition for hanging and drowning, aged death trauma algorithm, decision tree to support consistent application of inclusion/exclusion criteria
Data elements:

1.01 Institution - update to recent reference table for establishment identifier
7.01 AIS Injury Codes - updated to include AIS2015
7.12 update to Rockwood Clinical Frailty Scale

Guide for use updated:

2.04 Complications/Severe Comorbidity Identifier
4.18 Scene Total GCS
4.24 Referring Hospital GCS Voice
5.12 Arrival Patient Intubated?
5.15 Blood Alcohol Concentration on Arrival

We would like to acknowledge and thank the Data Working Group for their contributions to this update, including discussion at meetings, completing surveys about BNTMDS and reviewing amendments. Thanks in particular to Ben Gardiner, Dan Ellis, Nicole Kelly and Jenni Hawkins for their substantial input in improving / clarifying case inclusion/exclusion.

DWG Membership Update: The ANZTR Board called for nominations to formalise DWG membership. 14 nominations were received, which were then accepted by the DWG chair and endorsed by the ANZTR Board. The next meeting date is yet to be confirmed, but please email anztr.registry@monash.edu for any agenda item suggestions.

Transition to AIS 2015 Update: A survey was circulated to sites/state registries to understand the current progress and plans for the transition to AIS2015. The AIS license used varies by jurisdiction, and those yet to transition have concerns regarding privacy and cost. Dr Cameron Palmer led a meeting with the AAAM in February 2025 to discuss concerns about cost, feasibility and privacy of the new licensing system. AAAM have not yet provided the costing detail for the different types of licensing, and they will not provide the entire set of codes for AIS2015 licenses. API requirements remain. ANZTR will continue to accept AIS2008 and AIS2015 during this transition period.

Data quality and validation checks

Please implement validation checks for the common issues listed below.

3.02 Injury Cause, 3.06 Place of Injury Occurrence and 3.07 Activity engaged when Injured must be completed. Please do not submit blanks for these fields.
Please ensure that referring hospital data is entered if 4.03 Transfer from Other Hospital? = 1.
Please ensure submission of 7.01 AIS Injury Codes and 7.04 Injury Severity Score.
7.03 Discharge Destination from Acute Care must be submitted. Please ensure that all records have a code for this field.
Ensure that 7.07 Length of ICU Stay is not blank. If the patient was not admitted to ICU, please enter 0 for ICULOS.

Research projects

ANZTR data can be accessed for research projects. The ANZTR currently has data from 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2024. Please email anztr.registry@monash.edu to request the data use policy and for any further information about accessing ANZTR data.

rESOURCES

The Good Clinical Quality Registry (CQR) Practice Guide is now available here. This resource was designed for site Principal Investigators (PI) and clinicians to provide a general introduction to CQRs. Additionally, a Good CQR Practice Training Module has been developed for clinicians and PIs and is due to be available on the National Clinical Quality Registry Program website by the end of September.

ANZTR Newsletter | August 2025