Erlanger Medical Center is only one of six Level I Trauma Centers in the State of Tennessee. This status also includes responsibility for T. C. Thompson Children's Hospital which makes it one of only two Level I Pediatric Trauma Centers in Tennessee. Together they are the only trauma centers within 100 miles of the Chattanooga area, and state of Tennessee. They primarily serve patients from Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina, with more than half of the patients coming from outside of the home county.

Erlanger Medical Center implemented the Trauma Services Department to assure high quality trauma care and to guarantee adherence to state and national standards and guidelines.

The mission of the Trauma Services Department is to serve in a consulting role by providing assistance to all trauma-related areas within the medical center. Some of these responsibilities include, but are not limited to, administration, clinical, prevention, education, quality improvement (QI), and research.

Trauma Services maintains a registry of all trauma admissions, DERs (deaths in the Emergency Dept.) due to trauma, recording over 150 data elements for each entry. This data also becomes part of a national registry via a computer program developed by the American College of Surgeons. This bank of valuable information is available for research, education, prevention, and for QI activities.