Data-driven decision making is a catch term in the federal community these days. Perhaps no example is more dramatic than that of the military and how it’s used data to refine trauma care. Nowaday, 92 percent of service members wounded in battle survive. That’s a dramatic improvement from even a decade ago. Conventional wisdom had it that most troops killed on the battlefield could not be saved. Then trauma surgeon Brian Eastridge and some colleagues analyzed all the data on battlefield casualties from 2001 to 2011.
Col. Jeffrey Bailey is director of the Joint Trauma System. Bailey says while this study was happening, others also were crunching numbers on battlefield casualties. The evidence showed many of those killed in action died of hemorrhages. Bailey says in 2001, tourniquets were considered a last resort because of potential limb damage.