Injury Coding Center services for the Crash Investigation Sampling System (CISS)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is responsible for reducing the personal injury and property losses resulting from motor vehicle crashes. NHTSA relies on data to measure the characteristics and needs of the highway safety environment. Data is essential to reducing the human and economic cost of motor vehicle crashes. NHTSA has several different information collections that collect real-world crash data that support research, problem identification, developing effective countermeasures, identifying NHTSA program and rulemaking needs, developing, and evaluating traffic safety programs, evaluating new technologies and supporting NHTSA highway safety grants.

In the late 1970s, NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA) devised a multidisciplinary approach to meet NHTSA’s data needs that used a combination of census, sample-based and State reported data to provide nationally representative traffic crash data on a timely basis. NHTSA created two types of crash data collection efforts: records-based systems and investigation-based systems. The records-based systems involved coding data from crash records and included the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the National Automotive Sampling System General Estimates System (NASS-GES). The investigation-based system was the National Automotive Sampling System Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS) and involved on-site crash investigation combined with coding crash data and analysis of additional information, such as injuries or vehicle crashworthiness.

Over time, NHTSA’s data collection has evolved. In 2015, NHTSA created two new data systems and retired NASS-GES and NASS-CDS. These are the Crash Investigation Sampling System (CISS) and Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS). Under these data systems, NHTSA uses primary sampling units (PSUs) to collect information from police crash reports (PCRs) and other associated crash information. The CISS operates three primary components: CISS PSU Operations Center, CISS Quality Control Center (QCC), and CISS Injury Coding Center (ICC). The PSU Operations Center manages the everyday operations of the PSU’s while the QCC manages the technical aspects of the work produced by those PSUs. The ICC provides comprehensive assessments of occupant injuries in crashes produced in CISS. Key to this role is the evaluation and coding of medical record data, understanding of occupant kinematics (motion and movement of occupants) in crashes, injury causation scenarios, and involved physical components (IPCs) associated with injuries.

This procurement applies only to the CISS Injury Coding Center.[1] This procurement will provide injury coding center functions generated from up to seventy-three (73) CISS PSUs over the period of performance. PSU personnel consist primarily of Crash Technicians who collect data, and cases are the work product from PSUs that contain the data elements, images, and records collected during motor vehicle crash investigations. This contract is for the CISS Injury Coding Center aspect of this work. NHTSA will award one (1) contract for the Injury Coding Center task in Market Research for Crash Investigation Sampling System Injury Coding Center
CISS.

The objective of this contract is to evaluate and assign the injuries sustained by occupants in crashes produced by the CISS program using the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) which is an anatomical-based coding system created by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). Injury causation scenarios are developed linking those injuries to vehicle components and environmental sources in CISS cases. Cases are the product generated by the seventy-three (73) PSUs. When fully operational, these PSUs produce approximately 9,500 cases a year.

• TBD