National Major Trauma Registry (NMTR) Version 1.0

Traumatic injury is a global burden and contributes largely to death and disability across the UK. For every trauma death at least two people are left with severe and permanent disability and the effects of traumatic injury have considerable long-term implications upon the quality of life of its survivors. As a result of traumatic injury, there is also a significant impact upon the associated costs to the NHS.

The Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) was an established national clinical audit for trauma care across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and supports 218 trauma receiving trusts (170 in England) by providing each trauma unit with case mix adjusted outcome analysis, performance of key process measures and comparisons of trauma care.

TARN was owned and operated since 1988 by the Academic Health Science Centre at the University of Manchester (UoM), supported by section 251 approvals for the processing of confidential patient information. Following a UoM strategic review, responsibility for, and operation of, TARN was transferred to NHS England for the benefit of Health and Social Care in England. To facilitate this, the Secretary of State for Health has issued NHS England with a Direction to implement a data collection system to collect the data required. This data collection will be renamed as the National Major Trauma Registry (NMTR).

NHS England will facilitate the collection, processing and dissemination of NMTR data for use in system development and trauma care research and to provide analyses that drive improvements in clinical safety and patient outcomes and reduce variation in clinical practice.

Under section 259(1)(a) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, this Notice is served in accordance with the procedure published as part of the NHS England duty under section 259(8) on the following persons in England:

• Local Emergency Hospitals (LEH)
• Major Trauma Centres (MTC)
• Trauma Units (TU)

The organisation types specified in the above Scope are requested to comply with the form, manner and period requirements as stated in the accompanying Data Provision Notice.

Under section 259(5) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 the organisation types specified above must comply with the form, manner, and period requirements as stated in the DPN and supporting specification.

NHS England has been directed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care under section 254 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012; to establish and operate a system for the collection and analysis of the information specified for this service. The direction and accompanying requirements specification are published on the NHS England website. 

This information is required by NHS England under section 259(1)(a) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Dissemination 

NHS England will disseminate information that it collects for direct care purposes back to the organisations which originally provided it, for their own patients, under s261(5)(d) of the Act for direct care purposes.

Under section 261 of the Act, NHS England may disseminate the information it obtains by complying with the section 255 mandatory request to an organisation that has a legal basis for receiving the information. Dissemination of data by NHS England is managed by the Data Access Request Service (DARS).

Any dissemination will be subject to the organisations applying to access the data having a lawful basis to process it, NHS England having a lawful basis to disclose it, successful applications being made to the DARS and the organisations entering into a data sharing agreement. 

More information on data dissemination can also be found in the accompanying Data Provision Notice.  

Trauma receiving NHS Trusts in England can submit NMTR data using the NHS England Outcome Registries Platform. Data can be uploaded on a daily basis at any point throughout the 24-hour daily period, 365 days a year. The facility to enter the data 24 x 7 recognises that such uploads are often submitted by people in clinical roles and not within the 9am to 5pm working day. The collection is ongoing with no end date.