What is the purpose of the NTDB The National Trauma Data Bank® (NTDB) is the largest aggregation of trauma registry data ever assembled. It contains over one million records from 405 U.S. trauma centers. The goal of the NTDB is to inform the medical community, the public, and decision makers about a wide variety of issues that characterize the current state of care for injured persons in our country. The information contained in the data bank has implications in many areas including epidemiology, injury control, research, education, acute care, and resource allocation. The effort to collect and maintain traumatic injury data is in keeping with the mission of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Committee on Trauma (COT), which is "To improve the care of the injured through systematic efforts in prevention, care, and rehabilitation." What about patient confidentiality? In order to ensure confidentiality, the NTDB does not collect direct patient- or physician-level identifiers. NTDB data are maintained in a secure data base at ACS headquarters, with limited internal access. Access to NTDB data by external users is at the aggregate level only, and use of NTDB data is in strict compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). To Access the National Trauma Data Bankclick here. Florida Chapter, American College of Surgeons 221 N Hogan St, #404 • Jacksonville, FL, 32202-4201 Phone: (877) 310-7316 • Fax: (877) 835-5798 E-Mail: florida@floridafacs.org