We had the pleasure of meeting with a delegation of health officials from the Republic of Korea (South Korea) this week to talk about Arizona’s Trauma System.  The Director General of Public Health policy (Byung Guk Yang, MD) and his team met with our Emergency Medical Services and Trauma System team to talk about how we developed Arizona’s trauma system over the last 3 years.  Arizona has gained a national reputation for our ability to put together a solid trauma system in just the last 3 years.  When we began our quest to develop AZ’s system 3 years ago we had exactly 0 Level IV Trauma Centers in AZ- and we just signed up our 16th Level IV Center this month.  That’s progress. 

The Republic of Korea’s Health Ministry has been charged with and funded $1B US to develop their national trauma system over the next 5 years.  Their delegation wanted to visit Arizona and Southern California to view first hand our systems as they embark on their quest to develop their trauma system.  We spent a lot of time on Tuesday working with their team with a focus on the importance of collecting solid hospital and pre-hospital trauma data- so they can use data analysis to inform the development of their trauma system strategy.