Edgewood, KY - The Orthopaedic Institute at St. Elizabeth, a partnership between St. Elizabeth Healthcare, St. Elizabeth Physicians and OrthoCincy Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine, has launched an injury prevention program, the region’s first data driven database of injuries sustained by high school student athletes that can be broken down by school, team, sport and gender. The data collected will help athletic trainers develop programs to stop similar injuries before they happen.
As injuries occur, athletic trainers – provided at no cost by St. Elizabeth and stationed at 23 participating high schools across Campbell, Kenton, Grant and Boone County – input the applicable data into the prevention program. At the end of each sports season, they will analyze the data to identify trends and determine causes of injuries. This will inform the program that they prepare for coaches and other school athletic personnel to prevent similar injuries from occurring in future seasons.
“By doing extensive data analyses now, we are improving outcomes and preventing injuries for our student athletes in the near future,” said Dr. Michael Miller, Medical Director, of St. Elizabeth Sports Medicine. “Our athletic trainers are an extension of St. Elizabeth; by being ‘right here’ in the schools, they are helping to keep our young athletes out of the hospital and in the game.”
“Our injury prevention program is an example of organizations partnering together to build a healthy community by providing the highest quality of care at the most personalized level for our student athletes,” said Dr. Adam V. Metzler, orthopaedic surgeon, from OrthoCincy Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine. “Real, localized data is invaluable to creating programs that work – and that’s exactly what we have at our fingertips.”
The student athlete injury data will only be accessible to medical personnel affiliated with the Orthopaedic Institute. To learn more about the Orthopaedic Institute at St. Elizabeth, click here.
The injury prevention program is powered by Epic, a healthcare software company that runs other well-known patient record systems, such as MyChart.
St. Elizabeth and OrthoCincy introduced their injury prevention program to the athletic trainer programs at Ryle High School and Highlands High School a couple of years ago. The results – Ryle football experienced a significant decrease in surgeries, and Highlands experienced a dramatic decrease in ankle sprains – inspired the expansion of the data collection program to the other 21 high schools. Currently, St. Elizabeth’s athletic trainers are analyzing 2018-19 fall sports data.
“You can’t play a game without a solid offense and defense, but the health and safety of our athletes requires being on the offense at all times, and that’s exactly what this program did for us,” said Jim Demler, Athletic Director at Ryle High School. “We look forward to continuing to work with St. Elizabeth’s athletic trainers in future seasons to ensure our athletes receive the highest quality of care possible.”