Toward the all-inclusive trauma system.

During a 2-day period at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington, overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, a multidisciplinary group of health care providers reviewed data available on trauma systems in North America in an attempt to clarify future directions. Like the explorers Lewis and Clark, whose journey brought them down the Columbia River, the participants knew where they wanted to go, but to reach their destination, they first had to review the progress made during previous decades and analyze the available information. One destination long advocated by American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma and extensively alluded to at the conference is an inclusive trauma system.1