Phoenix drivers have a reputation for aggressive driving and high speeds, and Phoenix highways never seem to be without crashes on any given day. So how did Phoenix, Arizona do in a study of cities and traffic accidents?

Recently, Allstate Insurance researchers analyzed internal data to determine the likelihood that drivers would be involved in a vehicle collision. They looked at those cities in the U.S. with at least 100,000 in population–the largest 196 cities. To create the report entitled, “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report,” they took property damage claims over a two-year period (from January, 2002 to December, 2003) and used a weighted average of the two-year numbers to determine the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in property damage.

Nationally, the average driver can expect to experience an auto crash with property damage once in every ten years. In Cedar Rapids, though, the average is only once in every 15 years, making that city the safest of all cities of more than 100,000 population.

Here are the top 10, nationally:

1. Cedar Rapids, Iowa
2. Sioux Falls, South Dakota
3. Chattanooga, Tennessee
4. Huntsville, Alabama
5. Knoxville, Tennessee
6. Des Moines, Iowa
7. Topeka, Kansas
8. Lakewood, Colorado
9. Fort Collins, Colorado
10. Birmingham, Alabama

Clearly, those of us who live in bigger cities face bigger risks. In the category of big cities–those with a million or more people–Phoenix, Arizona was the top ranked city in the country, mirroring the national average of a collision once every ten years.

Here are the top 10 cities over 1 million in population:

(the number represents the national ranking)

64. Phoenix
111. San Diego
121. Houston
167. San Antonio
169. New York City
173. Chicago
177. Los Angeles
180. Dallas
182. Philadelphia

Tucson, Arizona also did very well, ranked 53rd overall in the study, and 6th among cities with populations between 500,000 and one million residents. The average driver in Tucson has an accident once in very 10.3 years.

We have heard that most accidents occur close to home, and Allstate says that’s still true: the majority of crashes occurring within five miles of the home. That’s logical to me; I would think that that’s where most people drive! How cities rank are affected by many factors, like demographics, commuting patterns, and city design, traffic engineering, and strong law enforcement initiatives.

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Often, a patient’s chief complaint in the emergency room isn’t about the illness or injury – it’s about the time it takes to be seen and treated. The new goal of many hospitals in the Phoenix area is to treat the patients as quickly as possible so you can get back to your life – faster.

Press Ganey, a leading national provider of patient satisfaction data, released in its 2008 Emergency Department Pulse Report showing the average total time spent by patients in U.S. emergency rooms is now 4 hours and 5 minutes. Arizona ranked 48th in the nation with an even longer average length of stay of 5 hours, 35 minutes.

Scottsdale Healthcare, Mountain Vista Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Center and Tempe St. Luke’s Medical Center have on average the quickest ER wait times– which means the time you enter the ER until the time you leave – it’s nearly 3 hours faster than the state average (Approx. 2 hours).

Scottsdale Healthcare has started to post emergency room wait times on its Web site.

Times posted on www.shc.org represent the time it takes to get a patient from the ER’s front desk to an exam room at Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn, Scottsdale Healthcare Shea and Scottsdale Healthcare Thompson Peak. Wait times are updated every 10 minutes.

The reason their wait times are quicker are because they have bedside registration, fast track care for less serious illnesses and injuries, electronic medical records and computerized patient tracking systems, all three hospitals are committed to providing the prompt care patients expect in a medical emergency with professional service.

High quality care. Advanced technology. Friendly, caring environment. You can have faster and better emergency care.

http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2008/04/14/daily31.html

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The most recent official survey determined there were 4.7 million dog bite victims annually in the USA. Another study showed that 1,000 Americans per day are treated in emergency rooms as a result of dog bites. In 2007 there were 33 fatal dog attacks in the USA. Most of the victims who receive medical attention are children, half of whom are bitten in the face. Dog bite losses exceed $1 billion per year, with over $300 million paid by homeowners insurance.

Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, has conducted an unusually detailed study of dog bites from 1982 to the present. The Clifton study show the number of serious canine-inflicted injuries by breed.

According to the Clifton study, pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios and their mixes are responsible for 74% of attacks that were included in the study, 68% of the attacks upon children, 82% of the attacks upon adults, 65% of the deaths, and 68% of the maimings. In more than two-thirds of the cases included in the study, the life-threatening or fatal attack was apparently the first known dangerous behavior by the animal in question.

As it investigates recent incidents of swine influenza in humans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stressing prevention.

The agency has posted several Web pages dealing with swine flu, including a list of what you can do to forestall this — or any — infectious disease.

The CDC recommends taking these everyday precautions:

• Avoid contact with people if you, or they, are sick.
• Stay at home — from work, school or other public activities — when you are ill.
• Shield others from your coughs and sneezes by using a tissue.
• Wash your hands often.
• Keep your hands away from your eyes, nose or mouth.
• Maintain healthful habits — get ample sleep and exercise, drink fluids, eat well.

Currently, there’s no vaccine for humans that prevents swine flu, though scientists are working on one. But there is a vaccine for some forms of swine flu in pigs.

Which suggests one more precaution particular to this outbreak: Avoid unnecessary contact with live pigs. (It’s safe to eat pork, but not pet a pig.) But that alone may not roadblock the spread of swine flu this time around. In pigs, this virus causes a respiratory illness that’s highly contagious, but usually not fatal.

As seen with bird flu, people coming into contact with infected animals occasionally become sick themselves — but the virus usually stops there. Rarely have humans infected other humans with bird flu — or swine flu. With the current swine flu outbreak, the swine flu virus has transformed, appearing to increase its ability to spread between humans.

“We’ve seen swine influenza in humans over the past several years, and in most cases, it’s come from direct pig contact. This seems to be different,” Arnold Monto, a flu researcher with the University of Michigan, told the Associated Press. “I think we need to be careful and not apprehensive, but certainly paying attention to new developments as they proceed.”

At this point, the CDC and other government organizations are focusing on getting the message out to individuals about how to respond to the threat of influenza. Public health officials are monitoring the various cases and conducting epidemiological research on the virus.

“If the outbreak turns into a full blown epidemic,” says Andrew Pekosz, an associate professor at the Bloomberg School of Health at Johns Hopkins University, “the government will have the right to place limitations on travel and gatherings of groups of individuals.” Schools may be closed or sporting events canceled, Pekosz says, and officials will implement quarantine procedures for hotspots of cases and begin distribution of antiviral drugs.

All these steps, Pekosz says, are necessary “to limit the epidemic and slow virus spread.”

Jeanne Matthews, an assistant professor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies, says health officials are “so dependent on whether it appears that community containment might halt person to person contact. This is a new strain. I don’t think we know enough about this flu to have a sense of when that should be.”

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